


Halo: Operation BLACK WIDOW

by Legume_Shadow



Series: Halo: Section Zero Archives [5]
Category: Halo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Author Likes to Write Weird Stuff, Gen, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-30
Updated: 2010-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:18:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legume_Shadow/pseuds/Legume_Shadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to Halo: Operation NOVA.  The ONI operation that started in 2573, twenty years after the Human-Covenant War ended, with the sudden return of the Spartans to Human-controlled space, is near its final stages of completion.  A cloak-and-dagger mission is assigned with the utmost importance to the Spartans, that not only holds the potential of ending the cold war between the UNSC and the Insurrectionists, but may also bring peace upon Humanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Era: Halo Trilogy, Halo ODST, Halo: Fall of Reach (first edition), Halo: First Strike, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx universe. Does not incorporate most of Halo: Reach (except for tech) or anything in the Halo 4 and Forerunner expansion mythos.
> 
> First Publishing: August 2010. All copyrights apply to the appropriate parties and no profit is being made from this fanwork.

**Chapter 1: Perchance for Peace**

 

Aurelia’s largest port, Riordan, was a bustling hive of all sorts of stores and cantinas. It was one of the few colonies that had been recently settled right after the Human-Covenant war, and its proximity to many of the re-terraformed colonies made it an extremely fast-growing hub. But whether it was just the governance of Aurelia or its citizens’ lack of interest, it never became industrialized; had never grown beyond the frontier look it had. Choking dust clogged the air, and the shouts of many merchants selling their wares made it extremely hard for anyone to hear each other. Children, adults, traders, merchants, smugglers, thieves; everyone who came here had a purpose and those who didn’t usually ended up on the illegal slave market.

Slavery was banned per the United Nations resolution that had been passed almost 500 years ago, but it was not for the slave market that the six-man team of SPARTAN-IIs had been sent on this particular mission. Their target was a black-market ring that had been supplying the resurgent rebels since about five years ago.

ONI had given them the briefing via COM about the ring’s leader, Luanne Michani, the bastard daughter of one of the most influential businessman in the trade business that circled the colonies. Of course, Michani’s father had denied all accounts of having fathered an illegitimate daughter, but ONI had not gone into details about that. That briefing had been about two weeks ago, when they were near the far end of the Outer Colonies, having just returned to the _Ember of Winter_. The only reason why it had taken ONI so long to track down where exactly Michani and the central location of the black market operations was taking place was because of the complex nature in which Michani had covered up all operations. There were so many legitimate fronts that covered her operations that even the UNSC intelligence analysts had been stonewalled for a long time by the bureaucratic red tape that kept them from digging deeper.

Now however, that was about to change.

 _For the better_ , John thought to himself as he and his teammates sat in the back end of the rickety sled cart that was about five carts long, dragged by a black-smoke-churning tractor. Incredible amounts of dust were kicked up on this end of the tractor, almost obscuring the front, and that was the only reason why John and his team had chosen to sit here. Other vagrants who couldn’t pay for the ten kilometer ride from the spaceport, across the parched desert to Riordan were also sitting near him and his team. None of them were paying attention to them, being more concerned about the fact that any minute, the dust would be whipped away and the driver would see that he had a cart-load of non-paying customers.

The change in the gears of the tractor was audible, even from where he was sitting, and John felt the deliberate shift of a gear change as the tractor started to slow down. He saw that they were only a kilometer away from the entrance to Riordan and gave a very slight nod to the rest of his team, who were watching the landscape and the upcoming city with alert eyes.

He hopped off, carrying the dust-covered duffle bag with him. It contained half of all the equipment they needed to pull this operation off. One by one, at different times, the rest of his team got off the slowing tractor and blended seamlessly in with the other people that had decided to approach the city by foot. Last to be off the tractor was Fred, who carried the other duffle bag with their equipment.

John frowned to himself as he followed a small knot of jabbering mechanics, shuffling his feet and keeping his eyes down a bit. Though it had taken some time for him to get used the fact that Fred now outranked him, he was surprised that Fred had not opted to take the lead point for this particular mission. All the other missions they had gone on after their successful return from Operation NOVA had been led by Fred, though the planning was shared by both John and Fred. He had briefly wondered why for this particular mission, but didn’t think much of it. Whatever was bothering Fred, was his own to deal with. There was no need for John to know, and it didn’t seem to affect the Spartan’s combat readiness and skills.

Both Cortana and the _Ember of Winter_ ’s AI, Calista, had gotten incredibly detailed imagery of Riordan from its security cameras and from random pictures that circulated through the integrated network from the various people that took images of the city. The imagery had been overlaid with the blueprint map that ONI had given them, and they all knew what the building looked like. Getting inside the building was going to be the easy part. Planting the explosives without detection was the tricky part and some had said almost impossible. But they were Spartans, they ate impossible for breakfast.

He suddenly veered off to an alleyway as he saw an approaching group of the local security force, making his departure from the main road as seamless as possible, as if he knew that his destination was down this particular alleyway. He saw the dark and light cloaked outlines of Kelly and Jerome veer off to another alleyway while Douglas and Linda fell into a crowd of people that had slid to the side of the street to give the security force room to pass. Fred had stopped in front of a stand, seemingly interested in the wares that the vendor was selling.

John tugged the hood of his cloak a bit further over his head and gripped the duffle bag a bit tighter. Ever since the UNSC had revealed that Spartans were still alive and had been active during the Flood crisis, the stories that circulated through the networks had shot them to near-legendary status…again. For this particular mission, their MJOLNIR armors were too bulky and too obvious and certainly would not let them crawl through vents and small spaces, so they had opted for the uncomfortable lightly armored black body suits they had last used nearly forty years ago.

In this heat, he was still sweating even with the suit’s thermal unit on active, but his hood obscured most of his face, so no one was paying any interest as to why rivulets of salty water was dripping down his face. It also meant they could not take Cortana on this mission, but she had assured them that the security protocols on Riordan were nothing like standard ONI security. She had even uploaded a part of her own intrusion software into the datapads they took along, if they needed it.

As soon as the security detail passed, he took the long way back out of the alley and resumed walking towards their mission destination. As soon as he reached an innocuous, multi-storied, slightly dilapidated-looking building, he walked straight in with his teammates following behind him. He bypassed the noisy, smoky cantina that was blaring excruciatingly awful music, immediately in front of him and headed straight down the ramps to a public restroom.

A patron of the cantina was in the nearest stall, vomiting his guts out, while two others were sitting in the adjacent room, smoking what smelled like an extremely noxious mix of military contraband black tar cigars. He led his Spartans to the farthest corner of the restroom and dropped the duffel bag, immediately crouching down and unzipped it. Fred dropped the other one and did the same. The six of them quickly assembled the firearms they needed and made sure that the explosives were equalized in both bags. Earpieces were hooked up and a quick COM check was done. No one in the restroom paid attention to their actions.

Both Linda and Fred slid their sniper rifles under their cloaks and left the restroom first. John knew that they would be on their way to find separate perches to support the rest of the team as they crawled around ducts and planted their explosives all over the exterior and interior building. Linda was their external sniper support while Fred would be on the inside. The explosives would be planted by the rest of them.

They walked out of the restroom and towards a neglected-looking elevator. Getting in, it creaked a bit and for a split second, John was unsure if it would hold the weight of the four of them. But the creaking stopped and the doors closed. Holding down the ‘CLOSE’ button, Kelly inserted one of the two datapads they carried and the intrusion software quickly churned through the pathetic layers of security. When the elevator started to move, he let go of the button and less than a minute later, the doors slid quietly open into the maintenance hall.

The four of them quickly got out, shed their cloaks and donned the coveralls that were the colors of the maintenance crew for the building. Though the topside was mostly a frontier dump, it was the lower levels of the building that showed the true industrial nature of Riordan. However, they had to plant explosives both on the lower levels and upper levels in order to successfully blow up the place.

John and Kelly took the left passage shaft that would lead them deeper into the lower levels of the building while Jerome and Douglas took the right which would bring them to the exterior. Each had a datapad with the intrusion software. John emerged from the downward passage and carefully opened the door, pretending that he did not want to smash the door into any business men or women in their officious suits.

They ignored him as he and Kelly shuffled to the nearest dataport, which also happened to be attached to a rather large support structure for the building. Inserting the datapad in the port he touched a button and watched the numbers scroll through as Kelly crouched with the bag, seemingly rummaging for several tools that would help them diagnose whatever problem they were pretending to solve.

The datapad beeped and the dataport automatically shut down. Using a powered screwdriver, John unscrewed the bolts to the port and yanked the terminal free of its housing. People continued pass by both of them without another glance. He shined a flashlight in the gaping maw and saw the connections that were there that would overload the system if connected right. However, it was not that simple, for Kelly was assembling a disguised explosive that would render the overload about three times more.

“Guards approaching, Blue Lead,” Fred suddenly whispered over COM. “One of them is suspicious.”

“Hey, you,” a slightly angry, irritated voice said from behind him.

John tensed, as did Kelly, and he turned slowly around to see one of the security details that roamed Riordan looking at him a bit shrewdly. It was too crowded and there were too many witnesses in this area for Fred to shoot the guard or the detail. He hoped the guard wasn’t too nosy or else a mission abort was going to be in order.

“You,” the guard said, nearly standing on his tiptoes to peer at the messily sewed on name tag on his uniform. “John…Doe?” the guard asked, incredulous.

“Ye-ah,” he mumbled, catching himself from saying the automatic ‘yes, sir’.

The guard stepped back and gave a bark of laughter. “Momma must have had a sense of humor. Think you can get that network outage resolved soon?”

He shrugged, and tried to pitch his voice to be as inarticulate as possible, “Hope so.”

“Do so. Don’t want to be reported just because I missed my five-o-clock show now, would you?” the guard said, sneering a bit.

“I’ll try my best,” he said, again, almost adding the honorific sir.

“Good on ya,” the guard replied then walked off, laughing a bit with his buddies.

John turned back to the mass of wires and Kelly silently handed him the disguised explosive. He inserted it, hooked up the appropriate wires and re-inserted the port’s housing back onto the wall. Using the datapad, he powered it back on and it gave him a beep of confirmation. He unhooked it, and both he and Kelly continued down the corridors of the building.

As he and Kelly wound around the interior of the place, he saw many weapons lockers full of ammunition and all sorts of guns. Some looked experimental and others were still locked in their crates marked UNSC. Quite a few looked like Covenant weapons too, and he felt a spike of anger course through him, though he quelled it quickly. They had a mission to complete.

Ten more charges were set between the two of them, all at locations where overloads would be possible, though one of them had been conveniently set attached to a generator that powered a part of the building. No other guard details had bothered them, though Fred did snipe two overly curious people that had tried to examine the explosive that was attached to the generator. That had forced both him and Kelly to go back and haul the bodies into vent shafts. They and the explosives had not been detected so far.

As soon as the last of the explosives was wired, he whispered over COM, “Red Team, status?”

“Noisy crickets have all been calmed down, Blue Lead,” Jerome answered.

He tapped into the datapad at the last dataport they had rigged up, calling up the countdown timer. Whispering into COM he said, “Set on my mark…three, two, one, mark.” He tapped another button and the five minute countdown started.

Kelly and he calmly walked back down to the maintenance area, meeting up with Jerome and Douglas. They quickly donned their cloaks and rode the elevator up to the main floor. Getting out, they walked out of the building and blended into the streets, staggering themselves. At the edge of Riordan, Linda and Fred met up with them after the two of them had jacked an unattended car and the six of them quickly drove to the spaceport. Their transport, a Pelican disguised with disfigurements so bad that even John thought it was an eyesore to look at, was still waiting for them.

They were already half-way to space when the building that housed the black market hub exploded into millions of metallic and concrete fragments. John grimly smiled to himself; another mission against the rebels accomplished.

 

* * *

 

“Welcome back, Spartans,” the two AIs who served aboard the _Ember of Winter_ said at the same time as soon as Fred and the other Spartans stepped off the Pelican on the hangar bay.

Fred still found it slightly disconcerting that the AI, Calista, had the all-too-familiar voice of the deceased Lieutenant Hattersfield. He thought he had gotten used to it, but it seems that even after all the years he had served aboard this ship, some things weren’t meant to be ordinary or gotten used to. He shook his head slightly, more to shake the dusty sand from his hair that was not stuck to his scalp, than for his brief moment of disorientation. The interior of the Pelican was covered with a massive amount of Aurelia’s dusty sand, and he could hear the slight groans of the deck hands as they ran up the Pelican’s ramp to maintenance the transport.

“Good to see you’re all back in one piece, Spartans,” the voice of Lieutenant Commander Jake Creighton said as he looked up to see the captain of the ship walk down the steps to the hanger deck floor.

“Mission accomplished, sir,” John spoke up as they all snapped to attention and saluted their captain.

Lieutenant Commander Creighton, a formerly active first-generation Spartan, returned the salute and said, “Debriefing will be in one hour. Get some food and get some rest.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.

If Fred had been the leader for this particular mission, then a one hour break prior to a debriefing would have meant about forty-five minute break. It was because of the necessary paperwork that needed to be filled out, most of it a detailed mission report. As he walked from the hangar bay to the common washrooms while listening to the chatter between Kelly and Jerome, he briefly wondered if he should take over the report writing for John, but quickly decided against it. Encroaching on pride and dignity were one thing, but filling out someone else’s report…not worth the bruised pride that he might inflict on John.

As soon as he was done cleaning himself, he entered his own personal quarters, granted to him because of his officer rank. There were many days at times when he missed being a NCO, where he could sleep in the same bunk room as his friends, joke with them on a whim, or play a mean game of cards. As he sat down in front of the small desk and turned on both the laptop and the datapad sitting on the desk, he leaned back and stretched. His left shoulder popped and twinged a bit; that wound had never healed properly after constant dislocations and torn-and-fused musculature.

“Welcome back, Lieutenant,” the crisp, no-nonsense voice of Calista said as her image resolved into a tiny hologram on the small AI port sitting next to his laptop. “The files you’ve requested have been compiled. I’m sending them to your laptop right now.”

“Thanks,” he said as he saw the active transfer flash across his screen and opened up the files.

“Wait,” Cortana’s voice interrupted his reading as her image resolved on the same pedestal that Calista occupied. “You let _her_ gather data for you? I’m hurt, Lieutenant.”

“Cortana, you’re not the only one with intrusion software,” Calista said, shaking her head slightly.

Those two were just as bad, if not worse than when the AIs Jerrod and Serina had been bickering aboard the Forerunner ship, four years ago. The only reason why the _Ember of Winter_ had two AIs aboard was because of the unique parameters that were inside both AIs. Cortana had extremely useful knowledge about the Forerunners, even more so after Operation NOVA, along with knowledge of the Covenant. The AI also had very sophisticated counter-intrusion software built into her base code, courtesy of whoever had originally created her. Calista was built with the mindset of a first and foremost extremely skilled military tactician and strategist with the secondary being technologist. The extremely experimental R &D group at the tiny colony of Peloponnesus had built the dual-donor AI.

Fred ignored the two AIs’ argument and focused back on the files that had been collected. There was not much, but then again, he had not expected anything, so the fact that Calista had found data was rather surprising. He had requested the same data over a year ago before, but nothing concrete had been found except for a codename. What he now looked at was very brief and didn’t even say much about the dossier of the person he had been searching for. Most of it was only listed as a status of ‘unknown’.

He had originally intended to take the lead point on the mission to Riordan, but Calista had found out through borrowing Cortana’s intrusion abilities, that the intel sent to them about Riordan and the black market nest, had been sent to ONI through a particular agent. This agent was one that the Spartans had formally been introduced to on Reach and whom had joined them in Operation NOVA over a year ago…

“ _Kelly, stand down,” Fred, interrupted, stepping forward before either could say or do anything. There was something about Falcon, right now, that suddenly made him uneasy, and it was not from the simple akimbo stance that the Spartan had adopted. He didn’t know where the fear came from, except it seemed like a strange vestigial whisper from Kurt that was guiding him to intervene. He took a quick glance at the SPARTAN-I.Is who had stopped their sparring and had visibly backed up at least half-a-meter away from Kelly…from Falcon. That was the source of his fear. “Stand down, Chief Petty Officer,” he repeated. “That’s an order.”_

_When even your most staunches of allies move back, perhaps its time to start paying attention because they sure as hell won’t tell you what’s scaring the bejeezus out of them, but they damn sure know that something is coming…most of the time, bad, Chief Mendez’s voice echoed in his head._

_Falcon was the only Spartan who did not remove his or her helmet since they saw the Spartan on Reach…at least he never saw Falcon remove his or her helmet. The Spartan always had it on, even when he or she was getting food in the ship’s mess and it made him uneasy. Whenever Linda in her icy Zen no-thought mode, it had did not made him as anxious as he felt right now. Something was not right about Falcon._

_Mentally, he shook his head, not really one for hunches, but all his instincts were screaming at him to make sure no one provoked Falcon. What little material he had gotten from Calista after Cortana had reported the mysterious Spartan’s name was only speculation on Calista’s part: the report of the entire rebel leadership on Regatta, which they had received earlier in the year, being assassinated without a trace one week after their hostage-rescue mission, did not help his worry at all. He normally would not have paid attention to such a report, but since that encounter with their rescuer whom he was almost sure that was the Spartan named Falcon, he had long suspected that Falcon was the one who had carried out that particular mission. He voiced that thought to the shipboard AI and the AI had extrapolated on it to produce some interesting theories._

_Fred saw the brief surprise flash across Kelly’s face as he pulled rank on her; she had not been expecting it at all. But that flash of surprise was quickly replaced by a neutral look and she nodded, though Fred saw that it was somewhat reluctant. Even John had a slightly surprised look though that had been closed just as quickly as Kelly’s expression did. Explaining his actions to his would not help, but he just hoped that they were perceptive enough to see the possible threat that the Spartan known as Falcon could be. He had no doubt that Falcon would do anything to get the mission done, as they would too, but was this Spartan going to be a potential snag during their mission?_

He had seen the Spartan in action during the defense of the Forerunner structure when John had been planting and arming the NOVA bombs, and to him, Falcon was a wildcard. However, in the aftermath of the mission, before all of them were cryogenically frozen for the duration of their long trip back to Reach, he had seen John approach the mysterious Spartan. The Master Chief must’ve opened a private COM channel because Fred had not heard anything exchanged between the two Spartans. The only reaction that Falcon had displayed was a tilt of his or her helmet before the Master Chief had walked away. Fred thought that Falcon was unpredictable and certainly someone that even the surviving first-generation Spartans feared, even if the Spartan was a strong ally and warrior during battles.

Unpredictable meant snag in his terminology and since the Spartans’ return from the Forerunner system, there had been a certain amount of unknowns in each of the briefings that they had received. In the months that followed Operation NOVA, Cortana had managed to pounce on several Intelligence files that should have been classified and stored away. One of those had been where the Intel for a prior Blue Team mission to Regatta to rescue hostages, which ended up having an unexpected fatality and had almost forced Fred to tread ground that he was alien to. The Intel for the planet, rebel base layout, and where exactly the hostages had been kept had all been sent by an ONI agent only codenamed: Falcon.

Several more files had ended up in Cortana’s possession, a few of them relating to the missions that the Spartans had undertaken before Operation NOVA and a couple after. Most of those Spartan missions had Intel provided by the same ONI agent. Fred had no doubt that it was more than a coincidence that a lot of the high-risks and high-stakes missions that the Spartans had been sent on for the past four years that the ONI Agent Falcon and the Spartan named Falcon were one in the same. He had Cortana backtrack and see if this mysterious person had done Intel work earlier, and the last that the AI could find had dated back to the late 2520’s, when the rebels and UNSC were still largely unaware of the threat the Covenant posed. The last mission that had intelligence tags from Falcon was for Spartan Blue Team’s planet-side Eridanus II mission to hunt down and arrest two high-ranking leaders of the rebel forces.

That mission had ended in success for the Spartans, but was the ONI agent Falcon from back then the same one now? That agent was pretty old then, he mentally calculated, so it couldn’t have been the same agent. However, the nagging feeling would not go away, no matter how much he had told himself that the two same-codenamed ONI agents from different time periods were not the same.

He had also briefly pondered about the ease in which Cortana had acquired the files after she herself had mentioned it in passing. Those mission files were supposed to be classified top-secret. Someone had either deliberately leaked the files, or worse, the rebels had developed an extremely talented AI that had hacked into the highly secured ONI network. He had pushed the thoughts on that subject away, deciding to wonder about it later, when there was not such a heavy threat from the rebels still hanging in the air.

It was because of the information that Cortana had given him that introduced his reluctance to take the lead point for the Riordan mission. If he had taken lead then he would have been one of the four to execute the main plan, but as a sniper, he had free reign to watch their surroundings, and he made sure that none of them were being ambushed. He wasn’t sure where exactly the Intel for their mission to Regatta had come from, but both Calista and Cortana had theorized that it may have come from the same agent, Falcon, due to this being one of those ‘high-priority, high-risks’ missions. The Spartans had nearly botched the entire mission on Regatta, and for the mission on Riordan, he was not going to let that happen again.

“ONI agent Falcon?” Cortana suddenly asked, peering over to read the files on his laptop. “Interesting…”

“It’s not going to work, Cortana,” Calista spoke up, shaking her head slightly. “Even if you rewrite and block traces or divert them, they have this agent locked up. I have a horde of viruses locked away from my foray. Would you like to help me destroy them?”

There was a distinct one second pause before Cortana gave a reluctant sigh and said, “Fine. Gremlins have latched onto me too. I suppose its time to get messy.”

“Just think of it as an exercise in vermin extermination,” Calista quipped as the two holograms disappeared.

Fred snapped off the laptop and glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes before the briefing. “Calista, wake me up in twenty, please.”

“Will do, Lieutenant,” she replied. “Pleasant dreams.”

 

Thirty minutes later, the Spartans were gathered around the austere briefing room aboard the ship. They debriefed Lieutenant Commander Creighton while he took notes, and at the end of the briefing, the Lieutenant Commander dimmed the lights and brought up a projection with their next set of orders.

“HIGHCOM has called us back to Reach,” Creighton began. “Judging from the urgency, this is most likely a priority one mission. I was not given the full details, but the planet you see here is called New Manhattan. It’s a populous colony and it’s near the middle belt of colonies that was untouched during the Human-Covenant war.”

The projector changed to another image, this time of a small station that was orbiting the planet. “Orbiting the planet is what the UNSC considers the United Nations for all the colonies,” Creighton continued. “This station was established after the Human-Covenant war. The UNSC does not have jurisdiction over this station, because it’s entirely civilian-controlled. Once every two years, delegates of the colonies meet here and discuss trade routes, politics, anything and everything that concerns their own planet.”

He turned off the projector and raised the illumination again. “As I said before, I was not given details, but from the brief message, it seems that HIGHCOM has a plan that may solve the Insurrectionist problem and bring peace between the UN and colonial differences. To guarantee that this mission is successful, they’ve requested Spartans.”

 

~*~*~*~


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Societal Integration**

 

Training was not the Spartans expected when they arrived on Reach, especially not the type of training that they had been engaged in for the past five days. Fred hated it. In the future, if someone said that he had to go through Civilian Societal Integration Training again for a mission, he’d tell them to go—

“Lieutenant,” the sharp voice of retired ONI officer, Captain Veronica Dare, spoke up, snapping him out of his train of thoughts.

“Yes, ma’am?” he asked.

Captain Dare shook her white-haired head, “Still too crisp, but subordinate enough in your tone.” Though the ONI officer was not even remotely active anymore, she had been placed in charge of the Spartans’ unique training for their upcoming mission. Fred frowned as the retired Captain turned to Kelly and said, “Spartan-zero-eight-seven, walk towards me again.”

Kelly gave what looked to Fred like a graceful nod he had not thought possible with his friend and teammate and took five steps towards Captain Dare. However, the captain held out a hand and Kelly stopped. The retired ONI officer said, “The nod I like. The steps, I don’t. It was a little too large and deliberate, but much better than day one.”

“Spartan-zero-nine-two and Spartan-zero-five-eight, walk towards each other, bypass and then turn around and come towards me three steps,” Captain Dare said.

They did as she ordered, though in Fred’s opinion, Jerome was walking a bit stiffly between his usual pace and what the captain had tried to teach them about ordinary civilian walking habits. On the other hand, Linda was walking with an incredibly fluid grace that even made Captain Dare’s eyes widened a bit in surprise. He thought he saw a small frown appear on Kelly’s face as she watched her friends complete the circuit.

“Good job, Spartan-zero-five-eight. A bit stiff, Spartan-zero-nine-two,” Captain Dare gave her assessment. “Master Chief, what is the current political atmosphere on Nici?”

“Unstable, though there are the right wing factions that may be planning a joint protest against the current faction that is in the seat of government,” John replied.

“And what do you think of it?”

John was silent for a few moments, but those moments were just a little too long. Captain Dare sighed a bit and said, “You have to remember, Spartans, there will be people asking for your opinions…especially on politics. If you choose not to give an answer, just say it.” She turned to Douglas and asked, “Spartan-zero-four-two, what is the quickest way to remember which way you’re supposed to start using the utensils when sitting down?”

“Start from the outside and work your way in, ma’am,” Douglas replied. “Otherwise, just discreetly watch what everyone else is doing and copy them. And don’t eat all the food that’s given on the plate.”

“Good,” Captain Dare said. “We’re done for now. One hour break, then return here and we’ll determine who goes where in the op. Dismissed.”

Fred finally felt back to normal as he straighten and gave the retired ONI officer a crisp salute as the others did the same. Five days of what he felt was as bad of a hell as their childhood training, and they were finally going to get into the meat of the operational briefing. He fell behind as Kelly and Linda took the lead, following them towards the mess hall in this particular building.

The only inkling that he had about the mission was from the briefing they had received aboard the _Ember of Winter_ , though there was no doubt in his mind that it was all going to be run by ONI. He was also sure that if they were getting this type of training, then infiltration was the norm and they would again, not be wearing their MJOLNIR armors. He didn’t like that at all.

Captain Dare did mention when John did not reply fast enough to the question he had been asked, that people there were going to be asking for their opinions. So if this mission was secret, then why expose the Spartan to potential people who would be able to see their faces? It was already bad enough that the atmosphere was at the level if not more since the UNSC had revealed that Spartans were active again. Now, they would be instantly identifiable targets if they tried to carry out whatever ONI wanted them to carry out on this mission. He had not a clue about what the actual mission was, but from the thoughts running in his head, it was already starting to sound FUBAR…or just plain ridiculous.

His frown remained on his face as he sat down in the sparsely populated mess hall and semi-mechanically shoved food in his mouth. Lieutenant Commander Creighton had said that there was the potential for peace. The last time he had heard that word was out of the mouth of Dr. Halsey, back in 2552, before the Spartans were to deploy on their aborted Covenant home world mission. They had been loosing the war and the UNSC had asked for volunteers to go bring back a Prophet to possibly negotiate a peace treaty. He was still mainly unfamiliar with the concept of the word, but was that what was to happen at the orbital station?

An unhappy noise escaping from Kelly brought him out of his whirlwind thoughts as he glanced up to see her shaking her head slightly. “I just realized,” she said, “that we may have to wear wigs, if they want us to be civilians.”

“No way,” Douglas said, shaking his head. “I heard that wigs were itchy.”

“Maybe they’ll give you a rainbow colored one, like the ones Déja showed us of a clown,” Jerome quipped.

Fred returned to his thoughts and half-unattended meal as Kelly, Jerome, and Douglas continued with their assessment of what they could be wearing for the mission. Occasionally, Linda threw her own opinion in, but she was mildly entertained, just listening to the slightly outrageous plans the three of them were coming up with. However, John was quiet, and Fred glanced over to see him in his own thoughts, the frown on his face almost mirroring his own.

Their hour break passed by fairly quickly and soon, they were standing in the same room they had been in for the past five days of training. Captain Dare walked in right on time, but this time, there was someone else accompanying her. He looked to be just slightly taller than her, with graying hair, but the ODST patch was visible on his BDU. The BDU cap that was stuff slightly in his pocket showed that he was retired, and the stripes on the shoulders of his uniform showed him to be a Gunnery Sergeant. The name tag sewn onto his BDU was labeled ‘Buck’.

“At ease, Spartans,” Captain Dare began without any preamble. “This gentleman here is retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck. He will be accompanying me on my mission, as will two of you. Master Chief and Spartan-zero-nine-two please follow Sergeant Buck. From here on out, the two of you will not be allowed to converse with anyone else, even your fellow Spartans, about your mission. If you have any questions about your mission, please direct it all to Sergeant Buck.”

John and Jerome gave curt nods to Captain Dare and followed the graying ODST Sergeant out of the room. Fred briefly wondered what mission the two Spartan were going to be engaged in, but dashed the thought and focused his attention back on the captain.

“The four of you,” Captain Dare continued after the three had left, “will be infiltrating the upcoming Colonial Summit on Station Kalpaña, orbiting New Manhattan. This Summit will take place in two weeks and will last three days.” She took a small object out of her pocket, clicked it, and the lights dimmed in the room as a projector showed the station along with its blue prints.

“As you may already know, Kalpaña was built after the Human-Covenant war, but not by the UNSC. It was built by a joint agreement with almost all the colonies and has extremely sophisticated security systems that rival even ONI. There are at least five separate systems, if not more, that run through the entire station. Many of the sensors there scan both retinal and fingerprint and there are many guards roaming around. Everything, including sleeping quarters aboard the station is monitored through multiple security feeds. Everything is wireless and there are multiple backups of whatever data they collect to many caches of storage located in many different areas on New Manhattan.”

Captain Dare flipped the projector to two images, one familiar-looking Lord Admiral Hood, and another of a woman with an angular face that was highly accented by sharp cheekbones. She continued, “Admiral Hood will be participating in this operation, though he does not have all the details of what will be accomplished. This is mainly for plausible deniability. He will also be representing Earth and her interests. He is one of your points of contacts. Your other point of contact will be ONI deep cover agent Falcon. This is Falcon’s cover identity, a representative from Luna, Lady Valerie Aldera.

“Falcon is your main point of contact for this operation, though our agent is currently not present to brief you on the details. Falcon is, however, already on the station, preparing for your arrival, so the details have been left to me. Due to the level of security I’d described earlier, two of you will be masquerading as aides to both Admiral Hood and Falcon, while the other two will be attendants for the delegates. Almost all the aides in attendance are highly trained in all sorts of combat and most are top-ranked colonial militia men and women or are ex-military. Besides most being bodyguards, they are also the secondary eyes and ears of the delegates. Attendants for the delegates are also trained, but mostly in weapons combat and are contracted security forces.”

She turned to another set of images, this time five profiled images showed up, and she said, “We have confirmed that all five of these people are Insurrectionist leaders and that they will be attending the Summit either in disguise or in the open. The four of you and Falcon will be assassinating these targets within the three days of the Summit. Failure to do so will jeopardize the possibility of a forced cease fire between the UN and the Insurrectionists.”

Captain Dare turned off the projector and the illumination to the room brightened. “Judging from how you’ve performed during your five-day training session, I have determined the role that each of you will be playing for this mission. We will continue with specialized training for that role you will play starting tomorrow. At the end of the week, you will depart for Kalpaña. It will take a week for the transport to get there, but you will be rendezvousing with Admiral Hood’s transport before you board the station. Details on that will be presented to you later in the week.”

She paused a bit before bringing her datapad up and read from it. “Spartan-zero-five-eight, you did exceptionally well for this training course, but due to the fact that your appearance is what civilians would call striking, assigning you to be disguised as Falcon’s aide cannot be done. I do not intend any slight on your appearance, Spartan. The coloring of your eyes and hair are what will cause you to stand out even more in the crowd if you’re assigned with Falcon. Pigmentation changes will not work because of the specialized contact lenses we will have to give the four of you to bypass several tricky security layers. But we may be able to darken your hair. Spartan-zero-five-eight, you are assigned to the role of aide to Admiral Hood. Drawing attention to Admiral Hood will be beneficial for the mission. Details will be provided to you later.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Linda said.

“Spartan-zero-four-two, you are assigned to the role of a security attendant. We’ve already tried a copy of Cortana’s intrusion software on the systems and our testing agent had been caught, so you will not be able to take her along. Security attendants are the only ones allowed to carry a visible weapon. All other delegates and aides are to check their weapons in through the various entrances. You will be able to help smuggle the weapons needed for the mission into the station. Details of your role will be given to you tomorrow,” Captain Dare continued.

“Yes, ma’am,” Douglas replied.

The captain turned to Kelly and said, “Spartan-zero-eight-seven, you are assigned to the role of a general attendant. This will give you free reign to roam around the delegates in the meetings. However, openly roaming around the station is not advised. Again, details will be provided to you tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kelly said, though Fred thought he heard a touch of excitement in her tone.

“Lieutenant, that leaves you,” Captain Dare said, turning to him. “As I said before, Falcon is already at the station, preparing it as best as possible for you and your team’s arrival. Coordinate with Falcon and eliminate all targets. Because Falcon is playing the role of one of the delegates, our agent may not have as much flexibility as you or your team. It is your job to support Falcon and take out the targets when the agent cannot. I’ll have details for you tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Fred replied, keeping the frown from his face. Of all the roles assigned, he had to be the unlucky one and be assigned the one role he was trying to avoid. He quickly dashed those thoughts and refocused himself. It didn’t matter now if he had been assigned latrine duty or this role, what mattered were the five targets they had to stealthily eliminate in three days.

 

* * *

 

The _Ember of Winter_ ’s weapons locker had been stocked with all sorts of weaponry, half of which they would not be able to use on their mission. What they could carry and smuggle through the security systems was very limited and Fred did not like that at all. Most, if not all the assassinations they would have to do would be close-quarters, which meant they were essentially limited to combat blades and silenced pistols. At most, he estimated that two, maybe three pistols could be hidden in Admiral Hood’s luggage, with the fourth being openly carried by Douglas.

He looked around at his teammates. Linda was sitting on the floor, in front of the bulkhead, reading something on the datapad. Her close-cropped red-hair was hidden underneath a tightly-glued wig of shoulder-length red-brown hair. When Linda had emerged from the common washroom aboard the ship after Captain Dare had helped her into her disguise, Fred almost did not recognize his friend. Even that small of a transformation had surprised him, though most of the comments to Linda had been made by the two AIs.

Kelly had small extensions attached to her brown hair, making it slightly longer, but she had glasses on, which made her look quite academic. At least that was Fred’s opinion, for he had only seen images of academics and most of them had glasses. She was standing near the laid out supplies, giving each piece of equipment a cursory glance before walking over to the table where their outfits for the first day were laid out. The second and third day outfits were already packed in the duffle bags that were sitting near the corner of the table.

Douglas was leaning against the bulkhead, occasionally scratching his head while reading something from another datapad. He had had his hair and eyebrows lightened and had prosthetic patches attached to portions of his face to change the angularity of his jawline. Since receiving the data that would pertain to the things that his role would be in the Summit, he had been reading non-stop.

They all had been pushing themselves to memorize all the information, mannerisms, everything in the past two weeks. Fred did not wonder why ONI agents that were trained for this kind of specific work were not sent. The mission parameters said it all. Given the security, how many people there were, and all the entire entourage – that was most likely to be somewhat armed in Fred’s opinion – that would be accompanying their delegates, it was almost impossible for just ONI to pull off what they needed. Still, that did not mean he was fond of the training they had been given. He found civilian life to be more complicated than anything else he had encountered.

The four of them had not seen John and Jerome since the retired Gunnery Sergeant had walked out with the two. Captain Dare had not offered any explanation as to what exactly their role was in the mission, and they had not asked. Fred was not worried about his two teammates. Both of them had survived worse than what they were about to engage in, and he was sure the two of them were going to perform their part of the mission with ease.

He forced himself to check the time on the watch he now wore that would be a part of his disguise, instead of asking either Cortana or Calista for the time. There was thirty minutes until he and Linda would rendezvous with Admiral Hood’s transport, _Serenity_. Douglas and Kelly would be dropped off by another disguised transport from the _Winter_ on trajectory to the station. Given the amount of time it had taken them to change into their outfits the last time around, it would be a good time to now get ready. “Suit up, Spartans,” he said, rising to his feet.

The complied, though he did see the slight look of distaste on Douglas’s face before it was wiped away. He wanted to agree with his teammate about his opinions on the outfits they had to wear, but refrained from doing so. He had to keep a positive, if not neutral attitude and could not undermine his own authority by behaving in such a detrimental fashion. He approached the table, picked up the items for his outfit, and wordlessly began to change.

 

* * *

 

Droplets of acidic rain sizzled onto John’s armor as it contacted the shield, but there was no visible drop in his shield meter, even in this torrential downpour. He had taken point in this motley little group that was currently sloshing through shin-high mud. Behind him was the retired ONI Captain Dare and Gunnery Sergeant Buck, both dressed in environmental suits to protect them from the long exposures to the acidic rain. Jerome was taking up rear, and like John he had his rifle out and held it steady and ready.

The motion tracker on John’s HUD was filled with red contacts, but this place was full of wildlife that it was completely useless. He had focused his audio sensors to filter out the rain and squawking birds and concentrated on any unusual noise. Thermal was currently overlaid on his visual, since if anyone wanted to ambush them, they would most likely also have enviro suits, but as an added caution, Cortana was also adjusting several other sensors in his suit every so often to make sure the readings were still good.

They had been dropped over three hours ago onto this planet and with only a heading marked out on the retired ONI Captain’s datapad, they had started to trek through the jungle.

John actually felt slightly sorry for his teammates that had transferred to Admiral Hood’s transport bound for the station over three hours ago, but he kept it to himself. The disguised transport had left the _Winter_ about an hour before the rendezvous with Admiral Hood’s transport had been done. He could see the subtle discomfort every single one of them exuded in the uniforms, or rather, outfits appropriate to the roles they were playing. He was also slightly angry that he had been assigned to what he considered the easier of the two missions, but he also kept that to himself.

Buck had briefed them as to what their portion of the entire operation was to entail, and John had summed it up to a simple point. He, Jerome, and the retired Gunnery Sergeant were just going to be bodyguards for Dare when she carried out her portion of the mission.

That mission was to negotiate a treaty between parties while the Summit was taking place. However, despite the secrecy, even the two Spartans had not been told as to who the other party was. But the fact that Captain Dare had requested the presence of Cortana meant that this mission was of vital importance, even if it was only a bodyguard assignment for Jerome and he.

“Contact,” Cortana whispered in his ear, just as he thought he heard a branch from one of the jungles’ trees snap. He held up a fist and the others halted. Looking around, John couldn’t see anything through thermal until – there – two cooler regions that were moving through the dense brush, and in vaguely humanoid shapes.

“Two approaching at eleven,” he whispered over COM.

“Three at five,” Jerome answered.

“Don’t shoot,” Dare said. “They could be our contacts.”

“And what if they’re not?” Buck answered, on edge.

“Give me a moment,” Dare replied. “Cortana, patch a COM through to frequency seven-nine-five-alpha.”

“Done,” Cortana said after a moment.

“If I have an initial zero chance of winning the lottery ticket and I buy one, how much did my chances just increase?” Dare said over the new frequency while keeping TEAMCOM open for the others to hear.

There was a long moment of silence before a hoarse, ragged voice replied over the new frequency, saying, “One over zero, chances is now at infinity. Stand down team.”

“That’s our contact, boys,” Dare said. “Stand down.”

Moments later, the faint squelch of boots sinking into the shin-high mud could be heard and a few seconds after that, five enviro-suited people emerged from the trees and brush. Despite the stand down order, John still felt uneasy as adrenaline spiked through his blood when he saw the rifles on all of them. Two people were carrying a bandolier of grenades. All five men stopped short of two meters of the group, all of them staring at either John or Jerome before the leader of the group recovered and tentatively approached Dare.

“Stand down, Spartans,” Dare fiercely whispered over the COM, noting how nervous the other four men were around them.

John forced himself to relax, but didn’t let his rifle muzzle drop more than ten centimeters when he held it down and away from the others. “Cortana?” he whispered.

“Standard rifles and grenades, Chief,” she whispered back. “No biological or radiological hazard signatures. They’re clean.”

“They’re clean, ma’am,” he told Dare.

The retired ONI Captain gave a curt nod before taking a couple of mud-squelching steps towards the leader, saying, “Veronica Dare, United Nations Special Tasks Group. I’ve been authorized to negotiate on behalf of the United Nations and all colonies associated with her.”

“Kahil Ferenzik,” the leader replied, depolarizing his enviro-suit’s faceplate. “I’m just the middleman sent to retrieve you. We still have at least a day-and-a-half’s walk ahead before we get to the place. The three of them said to expect you here.” The leader then mockingly bowed and said, “So good of you to bring guards. There are many beasts that roam this area…all of them not friendly.”

“Then let’s move, Ferenzik,” Dare cut in, voice harsh. “Best not to keep your bosses waiting, else I might have to explain why you managed to get your head stuck in the mud like an ostrich.”

John saw the minute twitch of displeasure on the leader’s face before the faceplate was polarized again as he stood up. Gesturing to his people, John heard a command being shouted over the other frequency while the retired ONI captain merely said to the three of them, “Fall out.”

“What language did Ferenzik just speak in, Cortana?” he asked, as he raised the rifle again, not quite keeping it trained on the person who was leading the whole group through the dense muck. Ferenzik’s people had surrounded them, and they too had their weapons not quite pointed at the Spartans or at Dare and Buck.

“Sounds like an ancient dialect of old Earth Russian,” Cortana replied. “Most of those who live on Luna have the old Earth Russian accent, but I’ve never heard that particular dialect until now.”

“Cortana, I need a translation software through my HUD for the dialect,” Dare said over TEAMCOM.

“Got it right up, ma’am,” the AI crisply replied and moments later, John saw bits and pieces of dialogue from the others around him scroll through the lower part of his HUD, like subtitles.

“Look sharp, boys,” Dare said. “Set COM encryption changes for every hour.”

“Ma’am,” he asked, “who are these people?”

“Need to know, Master Chief, need to know,” the retired ONI captain cryptically replied.

John frowned; he didn’t like it at all – armed escorts who looked extra trigger happy surrounding them, and a mission that required bodyguards of this caliber, and Cortana… This mission was already too full of snags and not enough Intel.

“If it’s any consolation, Master Chief,” Buck spoke up, “I don’t know anything either…and hell, she’s my wife.”

“Can the chatter, peoples,” Dare ordered, “We have a long walk ahead and a lot of twitchy fingers.”

 

* * *

 

Fred felt exposed without the familiar comfort of his armor around him. He knew that he should have been used to it already, having been in and out of the armor a lot during the past four years, but here, on the ground, knowing that there were rebels around him, mingling with other colony dignitaries… At least he had been allowed to carry a combat blade, though that was hidden up the sleeve of the jacket he wore.

Surprisingly, it had passed through the metal detectors, but then again, the composition of the blade was unique. According to Cortana, Corsica-carbide was not exactly a metal nor was it a type of carbonaceous compound. It was somewhere in between and the blended properties is what gave it an enormous strength to virtually cut through several layers of almost anything. He closed his thoughts on that and focused on his mission, or rather, getting to the point where he and Linda would be meeting up with Falcon and Admiral Hood.

The outer area of station was packed with all sorts of people milling about, and most of them were in the same situation as Fred was in – trying to search for delegates or party members that had been shuffled through different areas of security. Even though he was familiar with Linda’s disguise, he didn’t see her in the crowd as he pushed through. Spotting a few signs that were innocently hanging above, near the lights, one of the signs pointed towards the direction he needed to get to and he took a right. With this many people already and more coming in it was going to be a nightmare to make sure that this op succeeded, but he was confident that he and his team would be able to do the job.

“Ah, pardon me,” a polite, female voice said as he felt a slight tug on his sleeve, designed to get his attention. He stopped and turned a bit, wishing that he could just continue on and ignore the person who had stopped him, but with security cameras all over the place, his mind cautioned him to not brush off anyone who stopped him.

“Are you the delegate representing Haven?” the woman asked.

“No,” he replied, keeping himself from adding the honorific ma’am to his reply.

“Oh, pardon me then,” the woman said before she disappeared into the sea of people.

Fred minutely shook his head and continued through the crowds. Yet another lost aide, which he felt he would be soon if the signs that pointed to his destination kept contradicting each other. There was still no sign of Linda in the crowd, even as he glanced back and swept his eyes over the many faces. There was also no sign of Admiral Hood as far as he could see.

“Ah, there you are,” a voice spoke up from behind him. Before he could turn, he felt the pressure of a hand on his arm through the jacket he wore for a brief moment before it disappeared and glanced backwards. It was the disguised ONI agent Falcon, as Lady Aldera, who was giving him a measured, almost calculating look. Captain Dare had explicitly stated that Falcon was wearing a complete head mask, but as close as he was without invading Falcon’s personal space, the mask was completely flawless to him. If he had not known that Falcon was in disguise, he would have thought that the ONI Agent looked as she was, except for the elegant hair style and officious-looking suit she wore as a part of her disguise.

Something about the way the ONI agent presented herself as the noblewoman of Luna colony reminded him of what he remembered Dr. Halsey mentioning under her breath a long time ago – a snobbish person who had too many boot-lickers following after the person. Of course, Dr. Halsey had clearly been annoyed at someone when he had heard that passing comment, but the meaning had been quite clear. Still, that was the impression he got from the disguised ONI agent.

“Lady Aldera,” he murmured, nodding his head slightly. The dossier of the attendant he was supposed to play had called for him to be quite subservient and bumbling, but his mind rebelled at the idea, even if it completely complemented the atmosphere that Lady Aldera carried about her. He would play the attendant his own way without compromising the mission. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or did he actually see a tiny flicker of a smile appear on the ONI agent’s face – no matter. “Keep walking,” Falcon whispered, the words almost garbled in the strange Luna accent, prodding him a bit. “The cameras are always watching. Lord Hood is just down the ramp and around the corner. Your associate should already be there.”

It took them a few minutes to thread through the crowd and when they finally arrived at where Admiral Hood was waiting, Fred almost missed Linda in the crowd. She didn’t stand out as much, but with the mannerisms of the attendant she was supposed to be playing, she blended in fairly well with the crowd. It was only the fact that she was holding a folder that bore the imprinted seal of the UNSC and the fact that Admiral Hood’s name was etched on the folder that Fred recognized her. None of them were wired up with COM yet, so he had no way of telling if Kelly and Douglas had made it on board and were in their positions. However, Linda had looked up at the two of them approaching and a direct stare at Fred and a quick double blink told him that she had spotted the other two on the station.

“Looks like it will be a busy day, Lord Hood,” Falcon said without preamble as she shook hands with the Admiral.

“Indeed it will, Lady Aldera,” Admiral Hood replied before gesturing for them to move. “Tell me, how are the High Courts of Luna treating you these days?”

“The same as usual,” Falcon airily replied, “though the Council is considering breaking ties with the Earth-British High Courts…mainly for colonial reasons.”

“It sounds almost as if the revolutionary war was about to take place again, except for the lack of tea dumping,” Lord Hood answered, though Fred wasn’t sure if he heard amusement in the Admiral’s voice or not.

The light laughter that came out Falcon’s mouth sounded unnatural to Fred, but then again, he had never really been around people who openly laughed. The closest burst of emotion from him and his fellow Spartans was either a bare smile or their usual Spartan smile across their faceplates. But judging from the brief conversation he had heard between Lord Hood and Falcon, he had a sudden brief doubt flashing across his mind that they were the right people for this magnitude of the operation.

A nudge from Linda that he hoped she made look accidental dispersed those thoughts. As the four of them navigated through the crowds, Fred briefly thought back to the blueprints of the station. They were headed towards the temporary living spaces aboard the station. Due to the fact that Lord Hood was a true delegate sent to the Summit, none of the Spartans would be lingering in the Admiral’s living spaces unless it was a part of their role to.

“Ah, look, Lady Kadis from Cerapentia is here,” Falcon suddenly spoke up, gesturing with her left hand before turning it into a small wave as an elaborately dressed woman with a mousy-looking aide following her around, turned towards them. “Too bad her aide is like puppy that won’t go away even after it’s kicked,” Falcon muttered.

The lady gave a small wave of her hand too, but Fred saw the mousy-looking aide glance up a bit before glancing back down. He recognized the face of the aide – that mousy-looking aide was one of the five targets. He glanced at Falcon, who despite having a genial smile on her face had narrowed her eyes a bit. There was also quite a dangerous glint in those eyes.

“Maybe if you entice the puppy with a bone, it will come away,” he suggested. It would be hard for any of them to assassinate that target since Falcon had assessed that the aide would be sticking close to the delegate, but he had an idea that was both very risky and dangerous but could work.

“Bold, but explain it to me later,” she whispered back, dropping the waving hand.

“I hope Lady Kadis will not interrupt the Economic meeting this year in the same fashion that she did two years ago,” Lord Hood said.

“Tell me if she does, Lord Hood,” Falcon replied, “Luna’s economy is closely tied with Earth, so I shall leave that meeting up to you.”

“Evading economics again? I heard that your constituents were not pleased the last time, milady” Lord Hood said.

“It’s the same as always, milord. I choose meetings that _I_ feel are in the best interests of Luna, even if the government disagrees with me,” she stated. In a slightly lighter tone, Fred heard Falcon say, “And there’s Colonel Volkov...looks like his trip from Reach was not delayed, though I do wonder where his aide is.”

As the four of them continued to wind through the station, with either Admiral Hood or Falcon pointing out several delegates, Fred could see no other signs of the Spartans’ other four quarries. The banter between the Admiral and the disguised ONI agent was light, but he thought he heard a slight underlying stress in Falcon’s voice. Was the ONI agent also trying to actively search for the four other targets?

They finally stopped in front of a doorway into the living quarters, clearly marked with the delegates’ name. The door even had a palm and retina scanner, and a glance down the hall at the other delegates’ living quarters showed the same configuration. Boldly walking in and shooting their targets was certainly out of the option.

“They always put Earth and Luna together in the same suite,” Falcon huffed in exasperation. “Why never Earth and Mars…after all, those two are the cradle of Human expansion into the outer reaches of the final frontier.”

“Because Luna is where Humanity first made its mark during the bootstrap space technology era,” Admiral Hood replied, placing an ungloved hand on the palm scanner while lowering his head into the retina scanner.

The door opened and the Admiral walked in, followed by Falcon who also placed a hand on the scanner before walking in. Before Fred or Linda could place their hands on the scanner, Falcon called out, “System access allows two others to follow the registered delegates. You don’t need to scan. None of the aides are entered into the databases because of the possibility of last minute changes.”

Both Fred and Linda stepped in and the door hissed closed behind them. Their duffel bags were already in the general common room of the suite. Four separate rooms were beyond the common room, doors closed. The common room had a small kitchenette and many plush-looking couches – Fred openly frowned in distaste. If this was what the common room looked like, he was sure he was not going to be happy with the state of where he would be staying would look like.

“Is the fact that delegation aides do not have identities registered with the database a security risk?” Linda asked.

“Yes, and no,” Falcon replied, discreetly pulling out something from one of the pockets of the outfit she was wearing. A click was heard and then a very faint, almost inaudible hum filled the air as Falcon looked around for a few seconds before carefully placing the tiny device within an exotic-looking lamp, making it look like as if she were admiring the lamp. “That’s why there are five separate security systems throughout the station and an enormous complement of security personnel. There were at least five of them tailing the four of us from our meeting point until here.”

Fred’s open frown got slightly deeper as he heard the truth in Falcon’s words. He had not seen any of the security guards following them at all, and considering Linda’s slight narrowing of her eyes, she had not either. That worried him a lot – their movements around the station were already compromised by the overwhelming number of people, but now, they had near-invisible security guards following delegates and aides everywhere.

Seven clicks were suddenly heard in rapid succession and then Falcon dropped the snobbishly light tone and said in a brisk, business-like voice, “We’re clear, Admiral.”

“How many did you find in the initial sweep?” the Admiral asked, kneeling down and checking underneath the common room’s low table.

“Too many, sir. The security cameras in each room have been looped for now, but this little device can only operate for a few hours before the overrides for the feeds force it back. They cycle through the overrides at different intervals, but no less for an hour, so count on the devices working only for only sixty minutes. All other listening devices have been removed or disabled. The device will also take care of the listeners for about the same amount as the security cameras, if Security decided to come back in and install their toys while we’re gone.”

“Is it true, what you just said about the guards?” Admiral Hood asked.

“Yes, sir,” Falcon replied, giving a curt nod. “I counted at least five tailing us, all of them plainclothes guards.”

“If that incident had never happened two years ago…” the Admiral muttered.

Before the Admiral or Falcon could say anything else, a knock on their door silenced them for a second before Fred heard the distinct voice of Kelly saying through the door, “Lord Hood? Your luggage is here and has been processed through security.”

Instead of the Admiral walking to the door, Falcon had cross the distance in two short steps while pulling out a thin blade from underneath the arm of the suit jacket she wore. Fred automatically felt his hand slip under his own jacket sleeve to grip the combat blade stored there while Linda had fell into a defensive position in front of the Admiral. Falcon keyed opened the door to revel the lone person standing there with quite a number of bags arrayed around her.

Fred relaxed his grip on the hilt of the blade just as Falcon re-sheathed the thin, needle-like blade, and Linda stepped a little bit away from Admiral Hood. Kelly had a slightly disgruntled look, and Fred saw that it was not faked either. There were several bags around her as both he and Linda stepped up to their respective roles and dragged the luggage in. As soon as Kelly stepped in, Falcon keyed the door close.

“No problems with security?” she asked without preamble.

“No, ma’am,” she replied, before straightening up and checked her motion to salute Admiral Hood, for the Admiral was not officially on duty. “Spartan-zero-four-two checked it all out as specified.”

The Admiral merely waved a hand and said, “At ease, Spartans. I’ll leave it to you, Agent Falcon. Good luck.”

The Admiral walked over to the pile of luggage and picked one up, hefting it slightly before walking and entering one of the four rooms adjacent to the common room. “Where is Spartan-zero-four-two now?” Falcon asked, kneeling down and opening one of the bags.

“Processing and checking out other luggage,” Kelly replied, opening several other pieces of luggage.

The open luggage were covered in all sorts of paraphernalia and clothes, but sewn into those layers of clothes were thin pieces of lead that concealed parts and pieces of weapons. Cleverly hidden compartments in the many luggages also yielded the black body suits of old. Fred couldn’t help but whistle in surprise as he knelt down and started to assemble a silenced pistol. A cursory inspection of the luggage would have yielded only articles of clothing and other paraphernalia – even a closer visual inspection wouldn’t have yielded the pieces of weapons unless someone shook each piece of clothing. The lead sewn into the articles would have blocked x-ray scanners from detecting the weapons. This smuggling in of weapons was quite professionally done by the spooks in ONI.

“Given the security, we might have to go EVA through garbage chutes to get to some of our targets,” Falcon stated as the Agent slipped a small COM piece into her ear and tapped it while the Spartans quietly assembled the weapons. “Spartan-zero-eight-seven, we’ll deliver your body suit to you in a few hours. Zero-four-two you should already have yours.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kelly replied, and Fred realized that Douglas was listening over what he could only presume was an encrypted, secured COM line between the agent and him.

“As much as I would love to strike early and get this mission done with, we have to bide our time,” Falcon said, placing an assembled silenced pistol down on the ground before hefting a few components from another bag – this time for an assembly of a sniper rifle. “There are several meetings that will take place that will involve a lot of interaction with the delegates, aides, and security personnel. We’ll use this time to identify the habits and patterns of the targets and on the third day, when all the delegates are in the final closed session meeting without their aides or security personnel present, that is when you will strike.”

“What if one of our targets is a delegate?” Linda asked.

“Leave that delegate to me then,” the ONI agent calmly replied. “None of them should be delegates any how. Insurrectionist leaders of today learn fast from the mistakes of their predecessors.”

Fred picked up on the absolute tone that Falcon had replied with and it made him slightly suspicious. The ONI agent seemed a little too eager and too calm about this mission, but then again, he had never worked with Section One agents before, so he couldn’t tell if this was a usual demeanor they had or not. At least he was assuming that Falcon was Section One. Still, something was bothering him, and it was mainly because of what Admiral Hood had mentioned earlier.

“What was the incident that Admiral Hood mentioned about happening two years earlier?” he asked.

The speed in which the ONI agent had been assembling the weapons slowed a fraction as Falcon answered, “An attempted assassination happened two years ago by the Insurrectionists against several Inner Colony delegates. They didn’t have as many security systems or personnel back then. Unfortunately, this is the only chance we’ll ever get close enough to the Insurrectionist leaders. These five people are normally hidden well enough that even ONI’s highly trained infiltration specialists cannot get close enough for a strike. This may be the only chance we have to stop the rebellion and force the Insurrectionists to the table.”

They were all silent for a few moments as Fred, Linda, and Kelly absorbed the information. None of them had any way to know or confirm Falcon’s statement, but Fred suspected that those ‘ONI infiltration specialists’ were SPARTAN-I.Is and that the incident aboard the station two years ago had involved SPARTAN-I.Is. There were a lot of risks to this mission and so many things that could go wrong, but they had time to prepare. SPARTAN-IIs never failed to complete a mission, and Fred would make sure that they didn’t fail to complete this one too. They had a job to do and he was willing and ready to get to it.

 

~*~*~*~


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Executive Orders**

 

Two days of painstaking planning and information gathering was about to be paid off. Even though the closed session on this last day of conferences was not supposed to start for another hour, Falcon had given the ‘go’ signal. They had also decided that even though their COM was encrypted as best as possible, referring to themselves as Blue Team was too risky, so Fred had opted for the Spartans to be addressed as Grey Team. It was a good memorial to the original Grey Team, who, in Fred’s opinion, would most likely be carrying out this sort of mission.

In the course of two days, they had managed to connect separate single-high-encrypted-COM beams so when one of them said something, the reply would be coming in another pre-determined frequency. However, they frequencies were on the low side, that sometimes, voices got slightly distorted, but it was reliable.

Fred silently watched as the mousy-looking aide from Cerapentia, one of the five rebel leaders they had been tasked to assassinate, was currently walking down the corridor, right towards where he was hiding. All of them had a unique fully-body cloaking device attached to them, and his was currently activated. The cloaking device was designed and re-engineered from Covenant technology that had been first introduced into the modular units on the MJOLNIR armor. The JARNGREIPR armor used by the first-generation Spartans had a permanent cloaking module, and it was there that these personal cloaking devices had come from. The duration of these cloaks were extremely long, but the charge time, in Fred’s opinion, was quite ridiculous.

When the rebel leader passed the alcove where he was hiding, Fred silently slipped in behind him. The instance when the leader’s head was down to glance at something on the datapad, he quickly struck, wrapping an arm around the man’s neck and snapped it with a very faint _pop_. Not a sound except for the fans blowing out recycled air was heard in the corridor.

The datapad dropped and Fred caught it before it clattered to the floor. He quickly dragged the dead body back into the maintenance alcove he had been hiding in and popped open a tiny crawl shaft. He pushed the dead body in as far as he could and made sure the grating was secured before standing back up. The outflow fan would carry the decaying stench to the air recycling center – it would be a long time before anyone would find the body.

“Cee complete,” he whispered over COM.

“Nickel done,” Douglas answered, confirming that another of their five targets was down for the count.

That was two down, only three to go.

He glanced at the datapad that he had secured and scrolled through the initial message that were on the display. Fortunately, there was no specific order for the rebel leader to get certain information for the Cerapentia delegate before the closed session. There was only the suggestion from the delegate to the aide to get some rest before packing up to go. However, the second message he saw was a station maintenance report.

He frowned. As far as he knew, no other delegate or aide was supposed to even get maintenance reports. Only security was supposed to get those. What was the Cerapentia aide doing with a station maintenance report? He opened the message and scrolled through the report, but it looked like any other maintenance report that he had briefly seen on Douglas’s cover identity datapad before they had started this mission. Perhaps Falcon could make heads or tails as to why a non-descript aide would be receiving maintenance reports.

Shutting the pad down, he clipped it to his waist belt, seeing it melt into the camouflage before quietly, but quickly sneaking back through another maintenance shaft that would lead him to a garbage chute and to the outside of the station. It took him less than five minutes to get back to his start point, which happened to be one of the many bathrooms that careful manipulation of security footage by both Douglas and Falcon had secured the area for at least an hour.

Deactivating the cloak, he quickly donned the outfit that he had been wearing earlier as an aide over the mobility-limiting black body suit. He hid the sealant mask and breather back in the duffel bag and threw it into the maintenance shaft he had emerged from. Fred made sure that the tiny cloaking device and both the stolen datapad and the one he was carrying as an aide were hidden in a pocket and up his suit’s sleeve, respectively. For good measure, and to make sure that plainclothes security guards were not going to be too overly suspicious as to why an aide spent so long in a bathroom, he splashed some faucet water on himself, hoping that it looked as if he had needed a break from the meetings and had doused his face with water.

All was quiet in the corridor when he emerged and quickly but calmly walked back to the chamber where the current meeting was being held. Several aides were already meandering through the corridors, some chatting with each other, others on hurried errands, but most of them had relieved looks on their faces. Security guards were posted every two hundred meters and at every corner of each corridor intersection, and though Fred thought he spotted one or two plainclothes guards, he maintained his calm walk.

“I have Dime,” Kelly’s voice suddenly whispered through COM.

Three down, two to go.

The meeting chamber was still in an uproar and Fred could hear it even before he turned from the adjacent corridor to the main one that would lead into the main chamber. Showing his identity-card to the security guards posted outside, they let him after a few moments and he slipped through the crowds of people, slowly making his way towards Falcon.

He saw that their last two targets were still in the conference chamber, hovering quite close to their delegates, and therefore would have to wait until the closed session started. No matter, they had time.

Fred also saw Admiral Hood vigorously gesticulating towards one of the delegates while trying to argue his point about a topic, while a few seats down, Falcon sat, looking quite bored as the haughty Luna delegate. Linda was no where to be seen, and Fred could only assume that Admiral Hood had sent her out on some ‘errand’.

“Second message is strange,” he whispered to Falcon while discreetly handing her the stolen datapad as soon as he got to the undercover delegate’s side.

Falcon maintained the bored look on her face while glancing down at the datapad and scrolled through the maintenance message. Moments later, Fred heard Falcon tersely order through COM, “Abort. Mission abort--”

It was too late; gunfire and chaos erupted inside the chamber.

 

* * *

 

“Of course, we can only guarantee those worlds and their cell leaders that serve on the Council,” one of the three people who sat around the white-clothed table that was filled with several plates of steaming meats and vegetables, along with platters of fruits and trays of liquors.

“But it is most of those who have disagreed on your Draconian ways,” another said, “provided that there are certain concessions that are made.”

John watched as the man, Commandant Zergei, sitting on the right side of the table took out a kerchief from a pocket and sneezed into it before putting the kerchief away. The man sitting at the opposite end of the table from where Dare and Buck were seated, Councilor Mercell, had a perpetual frown on his face. The last person, a middle-aged looking woman with a severe-looking expression, General Fenrimore, merely folded her hands on top of the table.

He himself was standing against the right corner of the wall, giving himself a good view of the entire secured chamber on this jungle planet, while Jerome was standing near the entrance, directly behind Dare and Buck. Several black-suited guards were standing around the chamber, while Cortana had identified at least ten others on the outside of this chamber, either as overwatch or backup.

The past three days had been very tense to John as he found out exactly what Dare’s mission was, and he did not like it one bit. But he wasn’t going to start second-guessing orders from the governing body of the UNSC, since Dare had explicitly stated that it was from the orders of the UNSTG, the body of the UN which specialized in negotiations, that this meeting be held. Still, that didn’t mean that the presence of three of the rebel leaders plus several armed guards around them was going to bring a peaceful resolution.

“State those concessions, and we’ll see if we can work something out,” Dare said, tapping a few things on her datapad.

“First, we would like the UN and her associated colonies to recognize the sovereign independence of those who wish not to be a part of the Alliance,” Fenrimore stated. “There are a few colonies that we know of that would like to retain some connection to the UN Alliance, and we’ll consider those as colonial governorships with the expressed rights to form their own militia.”

It took the better part of an hour for the three rebel leaders listed their terms and conditions for the cease fire and peace treaty. By the time they were done, John wasn’t even sure it the terms were justifiable as a peace treaty. To him, it just seemed to prolong the skirmishes and opened more avenues for black markets and weapons smuggling to thrive.

“We’ve already given you information regarding the more ‘extreme’ leaders of our Council,” Zergei said, tapping the table with a finger before taking a sip of an emerald colored liquor. “We’ve sacrificed our own children to make this meeting happen. I think we deserve some of those on our list…mainly independence in military rule from the UNSC.”

“You now concede to openly sacrifice five of your people, while years of your resistance have caused so many of our best UNSC operatives to be killed,” Dare vehemently said. “That does not justify the hell you’ve put the UN and her colonies through.”

“Neither does your government’s creation of these machine-solders,” Fenrimore stated, gesturing to both John and Jerome. “You walk in here like the wounded with two of them to protect you, yet you do not acknowledge how many of our peoples were killed over years by them! Do not play the martyr, Ambassador Dare…it doesn’t suit you of someone of your caliber.”

A tense minute of silence fell between the two parties, and both John and Jerome had noticed the visible tightening of several guards’ weapons on their hands. Dare’s face was completely void of any expression as she stared at each of the rebel leaders’ face for a long moment, while Buck had a very angry frown on his face, but didn’t say a word.

That silence was shattered when the door to the conference chamber suddenly opened, causing both John and Jerome to point their weapons at the intruder who froze in his tracks. Dare had turned around to see who it was and had held up a hand to stop the Spartans from firing, while Buck had immediately stood up and was almost positioned in front of Dare, protecting her.

“Let him pass,” one of the rebel leaders said.

The Spartans’ rifle relaxed a fraction as the black-fatigued man scuttled in and the door closed, while Dare and Buck remained standing, but with their attention now on the rebel leaders. The messenger dashed up to the three and whispered something in their ears that caused the man to frown, before retreating from the room. Even with his augmented hearing, John couldn’t hear what had been said. Whatever it was, John had clearly noticed that Mercell now looked extremely nervous while the other two had schooled their expressions to neutral.

“Cortana?” he whispered.

“I got nothing, Chief,” she replied.

“Well, um, you’ll have to excuse us, Ambassador,” Mercell started, before glancing over at the other two leaders. “We…ah, seem to be having some problems--”

“With what?” Buck broke in, taking a couple of steps away, causing a cascade of rifles to be pointed mostly at him. John had his rifle pointed at the leaders, as did Jerome. Buck merely held up two placating hands before saying, “Look, if we’re going to be happy campers and all hold hands to sing ‘Kum-bai-yah’ in the future, let’s start with the no-gun pointing thing at me. I don’t like that.”

“Buck,” Veronica hissed, “stand down…”

“Let me handle this, Veronica,” Buck answered, waving his hand at Dare. “These guys obviously don’t speak much flowery lingo…no offense…”

Very reluctantly, one of the leaders waved away the rifles, and the black-clad commandos pointed their weapons away. Dare merely cross her arms over her chest and shook her head. John found it extremely odd that the retired ONI officer would even consider letting another who clearly was not cut out for this type of negotiation-mission to speak for them.

“Okay,” Buck began, “That’s a bit better. So, you now have problems? Well so do we. Why not let us know what’s bothering you and maybe we can help? You know…like future allies and stuff like that. It doesn’t have to be all hunky-dory between the UNSC and you guys, but it’s a start. You want your freedom? Maybe the best way to convince the bigwigs back home is to show that you’re willing to cooperate with us.”

The rebel leaders were silent for a moment before Fenrimore stated, “Joint military exercises is hardly what I have in mind for any sort of cooperation.” But before either Dare or Buck could say anything, the woman held up a hand and said, “But we may require your assistance in the matter, for it concerns both parties.”

“Your show, Veronica,” Buck said, returning to his seat, just as Dare and the three leaders sat down at the table again.

One of the other two leaders waved a hand and several people came in and cleared the large table of its contents. The chamber’s lights were dimmed a bit as several holographic images were projected from the glossy surface. “What do you know of Grey Haldor?”

John studied the image that had appeared in the forefront of the projection while Cortana whispered to him, “According to ONI’s files, Grey Haldor, or rather, Lady Grey Illani Moira Haldor, the third and steward to the monarchial government throne, was an extremely dangerous person. She was nicknamed ‘The Grey Lady’ because of the massive amounts of executions she’s personally performed on her home planet, Durandal Four. Among those she’s executed, most of them were the families of the royal guards who had whispered dissent about her rule…and even those petty criminals whose only offense was stealing food to feed themselves were executed by her. She replaced over half of the royal guards with mercenaries…and most of them were as ruthless as she was. This woman has so much blood on her hands…”

“It sounds like something happened to her,” John replied.

“Something did. She didn’t even last six months on the throne before rebel forces rallied together and deposed her in 2565 before the UNSC could do something about it. However, she wasn’t killed and was instead sent to a rebel max-sec prison out in the middle of nowhere.”

“The Grey Lady?” Dare asked. “She has the blood of over a billion people on her hands, most of them from personally executing them…with upwards of at least fifty executions a day. She’s been in one of your provisional maximum security prisons, since twenty-five-sixty-five hasn’t she? You took her down before we even had time to sneeze.”

“Indeed we did,” Fenrimore said, steepling her fingers together. “The message that we just received was from one of our groups monitoring the security downlinks from Station Kalpaña to one of the multiple server caches. You’d be surprised at what data is extractable from a physical link into a cache. But no matter…what is important is that I just got a report that says The Grey Lady is aboard the station and has taken the entire place hostage.”

“Looks like you need to build yourself a better holding pen,” Buck murmured.

“What’s your proof?” Dare levelly asked.

“Best thing is for us to actually go to one of the physical locations of the caches and see the security footage for ourselves,” Fenrimore stated. “Frankly, I’m with you on this one…I don’t believe everything that my commandos say until I see the proof.”

“How far is it?”

“The closest one? About seven hours walking away,” Fenrimore replied.

“We’ll summon a Pelican then--” Dare began but was cut off by Zergei.

“That brings us to another point about this whole working together business, Ambassador,” the sniffling man said.

“We don’t have cooties,” Buck flatly stated.

“Buck, shut up,” Dare hissed. To the rebel leaders, she said, “What point now?”

“You have a spy on board the ship you arrived in,” Fenrimore said. “One of the others on the Council, most likely one of the five extremists we sent you info on, probably planted the spy on the ship. So far, the spy has been occupied by what is going on, on the station, but the minute you send for a Pelican and _don’t_ immediately return to the ship with it…well, then our meeting here is blown.”

“The crew and her captain are under the impression that I and my team are down here, trying to physically hack into the caches, yes,” Dare said. “To walk back to the Pelican we took to get down here would take too much time… What do you propose? If indeed, The Grey Lady has somehow managed to escape your supposedly max-sec prison, then no one on board that station will last seven hours.”

“We have a ship--” Mercell started before Dare interrupted the man.

“You planned this, didn’t you?”

The rebels shook their heads and Cortana whispered into the encrypted TEAMCOM, saying, “The biometric readings say that they’re actually telling the truth…this time. They’re genuinely surprised.”

“We didn’t plan anything like this,” Zergei protested. “That ship was supposed to be our transport back to our colonies.”

Dare was silent for a long moment before saying, “Fine. In the spirit of future negotiations of peace, I’ll believe you.”

“Thank you,” Zergei said a bit huffily before sneezing again.

“We have a ship and we’re just as curious as you most likely are. The sooner we leave and confirm the report, the better chance we’ll have time to put some plan into action,” Mercell said.

“All right,” Dare said, as they all stood up. “Lead the way. Any funny business and--”

“No need to threaten us, Ambassador Dare. We know all too well what your Spartans can do. Besides, if we had our own Spartans, we’d do the same too,” Fenrimore murmured, taking the lead.

 

* * *

 

Time seemed to slow down and race at the same instant as Fred leapt for the nearest traitorous aide he saw that had pulled out a pistol and was about to shoot a delegate. His mind raced as he absorbed the tactical situation while simultaneously tackling the aide to the ground as he snatched the pistol, breaking some of the aide’s fingers in the process.

Falcon, twenty-seven degrees to his immediate left and behind him, had already managed to knock Admiral Hood to the ground to safety. Four security guards with rifles were directly in front of him, with their backs to him. Seven more were scattered in a two to three degree separation arc directly to his right, firing their weapons at several delegates and aides. Two aides were near the door, five meters away in a forty-two degree angle. Three more were near where Falcon was, and that left the ten security guards behind him.

He immediately shot two of the guards in front of him and lifelessly crumpled before the other two reacted and started to turn. Before the other two could fire, he had kicked up a loose metal table and sent it straight into the guards while he spun around and shot two of the ten guards behind him, each with a single bullet through the head.

He managed to fling up another table just in the nick of time as the other guards opened fire at him. The table was just barely strong enough to deflect the bullets, though the screams of the terrified delegates cut straight through the calm battle haze that had enveloped his mind. He couldn’t fight here without getting innocents killed, but between him and the outside were several layers of delegates, aides, and armed security personnel. More than a few were already lying in pools of blood that slicked the floor, dead from the initial rounds of gunfire.

“Stop!” a cold, commanding voice shouted over the bullets and screams. The silence that quickly followed was as if a blanket had been completely draped over the area, muffling all noise as Fred pivoted and pointed his weapon directly where he heard the voice coming from.

“Lay down your weapons or I’ll blow them up!” an incredibly tall woman, almost as tall as a Spartan, who looked no more than her early teens with short cropped dark hair, had a bandolier of grenades held in one hand with her thumb against one of the rings. Several delegates were being forcibly held around her with several more guards that he had not initially accounted for, holding their weapons against their heads. The grenades on the bandolier were strung together with a short enough, thick steel wires that even if Fred could shoot the strings off, the bullet’s force would be enough to rip the pins off the explosives.

A quick glance over told him that Falcon was also unwaveringly pointing a pistol at the woman. Admiral Hood was safely behind her and half-sitting on the ground against a large column.

He quickly returned his attention to the woman dressed in an unmarked, olive green military uniform with matte black, shin high combat boots. Worse enough, the woman held the lynching ring in a dead man’s grip, so that even if he or Falcon shot her or tried to blow off her hand, the pins would still be ripped from the grenades.

Fred caught Falcon glancing over at him, and even though her eyes remained expressionless, she was thinking the same thing as him. Whatever they tried to do to the woman or to the people holding several delegates hostages, it would end with innocent killed. The losses were not acceptable.

“Put your weapons down,” the woman demanded. “Now!”

Falcon was the first to let her pistol go as she held her hands up in a surrender gesture. Very reluctantly, Fred followed; he had a duty to protect Earth and her colonies, and that meant not getting innocents killed. But it also did _not_ mean to surrender arms and give into terrorists. He would have to think of another way, and the only consolation he had was the fact that the rest of Grey Team was still out around the station. At least he hoped they were still free. It was not mission fail yet.

“Search them,” the woman ordered, but did not relax her guard just yet.

Three security guards roughly searched him after one grabbed the pistol from his hand, and despite his instincts screaming at him to completely wipe the guards to the floor, he held himself in check. The olive-drabbed woman was still holding the grenades and the other guards had not let the hostages go yet. These were well-trained terrorists.

“Ma’am, I found this,” one of the guards said, pulling the hidden combat blade from his jacket’s sleeve out and held it up, while the other two firmly held him by the arms.

“Bring it here,” the woman ordered and the guard walked over and handed to her.

“Ma’am…” one of the other guards searching Falcon said, “I don’t think the Luna delegate is who she claims to be…”

Fred glanced over at the woman who wore a frown while idly twirling the combat blade in her other hand as Admiral Hood was roughly dragged from behind Falcon and towards the rest of the delegates and aides who were being held hostage. “Show me from there,” the woman said.

He saw them make Falcon kneel, who initially resisted before giving in, seeing that the woman still had the grenades. One of the rebel terrorists took out a small blade and pierced its edge into the nape of Falcon’s neck before wiggling it around. Fred saw a flap of skin come loose and the full mask that the ONI agent had been wearing was slowly peeled off. Though his eyes widened on their own accord from his utter surprise, he managed to control his shock enough to not let it completely show on his face as the full-head mask of Falcon’s undercover identity was ripped away and fell to the ground.

A friend who he had thought had died over four years ago was in fact, still quite alive.

 

* * *

 

“Cortana, anything in the databases tell you where they could’ve gotten this technology?” Dare whispered as softly as she could over TEAMCOM.

“Unknown, ma’am,” Cortana answered after a few moments of silence. “Though from the sounds and shape of the craft, it may be very old.”

“How old?”

“I’m guessing here, but maybe the late bootstrap technologies to get us into space, back in the late twenty-first, early twenty-second century. The hallmarks are there, but this piece of junk doesn’t even have a wireless network I can connect to. Without a direct connection, I’m only seventy-five percent sure. Still, even for a craft that old, it shouldn’t be able to fly, not with the modern day fuels…it’s also a wonder why we haven’t been shot down or pinged by the _Winter_ yet, considering the technology.”

“This piece of junk is going to be the death of me,” Buck murmured just barely loud enough that the Master Chief and Jerome heard him, but no one else picked up on the comment. “It’s worse than a Firefly-classed pirate vessel.”

“I notice that you’ve been staring at the bulkheads for a while, Ambassador,” General Fenrimore said. “I can guess that you’re wondering how old this craft is.”

“More to the point, General Fenrimore,” Dare replied, “is that I’m wondering if this bucket of bolts is going to hold together to get us to the server station.”

“It could be worse,” Jerome said over a private COM channel to John. “We could be surrounded like that Flood-Forerunner planet.”

“Agreed,” John replied.

“It will hold,” Fenrimore replied. “It was made for space travel, not some ground car crash dummy experiment. The UNSC may have had more advance technologies for a long time, but then again, you’ve always underestimated the ingenuity of the free mind.”

Before Dare could reply, John felt the not-so-subtle shift of the strange craft descending and before long, the engines had whined down and the belly of the craft had begun to lower. While the three rebel delegates took the lead, tromping through the thick brush in their environmental suits, John took point after them, training his weapon not quite on their backs as several personal security guards flanked the group.

Their trek through the jungle was not long and after they entered a small, hastily erected facility that looked temporary, one of the two workers at the facility merely handed a laptop over to Commandant Zergei. Dare and Buck approached while both John and Jerome made sure that the area was clear before they stood guard near the entrance.

“Chief…Jerome,” Cortana whispered in their ears, “I have linked into the wireless from the laptop.”

Several small video feeds appeared on John’s HUD as he watched the security feed from what he could only assume as one of the station’s main chambers where the conference was being held. As soon as the terrorists started to fire their guns, he saw many people fall to the ground, both wounded, dead, and trying to escape the bullets. On another feed, he saw the slightly discernable face of Fred, in disguise, leap to tackle an aide that was about to fire a gun at a few delegates, wrestling the weapon away. Four guards around Fred were down in less than five seconds. Not moments later, did several guards and aides stop firing as a woman in the middle of a group of delegates shout for a cease fire.

Another security camera showed a woman holding a pistol as both she and Fred stopped firing, but kept their weapons pointed at the woman and the guards who where holding several delegates hostage. John paused one of the feeds that had the closest footage of Grey Haldor and zoomed in.

“She hasn’t even aged since her initial incarceration,” Cortana whispered in his ear. “That’s really odd…max sec, even rebel ones, usually don’t put their prisoners in cryo…and it says in her profile that she’s allergic to cytoprethaline.”

“I hope that you’re ship won’t take more than an hour to get to the station,” Dare spoke up in the silence. “None of them are going to last that long with The Grey Lady there…least of all Lord Hood.”

“My thoughts exactly, Ambassador,” Zergei replied. “We both have people in there that we need to rescue and a gnat to swat. For the interests of the future, I propose to launch a strike team now to take control of the situation and station.”

“Agreed,” Dare said, nodding. “The Spartans will accompany the people you choose.”

“Cortana,” John whispered over a private link between him and the AI, “are there any footages of the rest of the Spartans? Have they also been compromised?”

“No footage so far, Chief. Dare may not want to reveal that there’s already Spartans on the station… I wouldn’t want to either,” the AI replied.

“I, Savois, and Ritter will be going,” General Feniromore stated. “You have no need to worry or fear, Ambassador. I and my men will not do anything to compromise the lives of your people.”

John cast a dubious look at the middle-aged woman, but said nothing except to nod. He didn’t even know what abilities the General had, but if she was willing to risk her life in this operation, then he accepted it. However, he was not going to take orders from a rebel leader, even if she outranked him. The successful rescue of UNSC-allied delegates was his priority. His Spartans were secondary.

 

* * *

 

A M6I pistol was strapped to the waist belt at Lady Grey Haldor’s side. She was currently strolling about the chamber, staring into the terrified eyes of the kneeled and bound hostages.

Those aides, who were still alive, except for those who were traitors, carried neural inhibitor collars around their necks, Fred and Falcon included. The neural inhibitor around his neck had cut off COM between him and Grey Team, and rendered him unable to move, except to breathe. He briefly wondered where his team was before focusing his attention back into the crowd. Most of the delegates had thick plastic zip ties around their wrists and ankles, and where either bound back-to-back or front-to-front with their aides or a loyalist security guard.

“Grey Team COM reestablished,” Falcon whispered in his ear, pressed against him, with Admiral Hood pressed against her. The bandolier of grenades that Lady Haldor had initially been holding had been draped around the three’s necks while the connecting pin was hooked to the wall the three of them were leaning against. The force of a sudden movement, such as an explosion near the chamber would instantly separate the pins on the grenades from their explosive packages, blowing all three of them to oblivion. He knew there were worse ways of dying.

Fred had completely pushed the shock and surprise from his thoughts after the rebels had revealed Falcon’s true identity. That deliberate unmasking had told him that _someone_ knew that they had an operation, but only so much, for his genuine surprised look was taken by the rebels as ‘surprise that the delegate he served was not the delegate who he thought it was’.

To him, it seemed that the rebel leader did not know the whole extent of the operation, only a part of it, but it was still disturbing to know that the rebels somehow knew that Falcon was not a delegate. There was either a large leak in ONI, or there was a spy that was somewhere close to the operation.

He continued to clamp down on that shock of who exactly Falcon was as she continued to whisper, saying, “Four says there’s a snag. Security feeds active and hostages everywhere. Three has eyes on one of the control rooms. Two is en-route to here. ETA two minutes. Eyes on room?”

“Tee is near the entrance column, standing next to two armed guards with assault rifles. Aitch is in the shadows, near the port wall, thirty degrees left of the longitudinal center of the room. The rebel leader is currently near Emerald Cove’s delegate,” he answered, keeping his voice as low as possible.

He heard Falcon relay the information through the reestablished COM. He was puzzled as to how she had reestablished COM when the inhibitor collars effectively paralyzed the person while cutting off electronics. That would have to be for later, when they got out. Grey Team was still loose.

Admiral Hood suddenly whispered to them, “Guard on approach.”

“Ma’am, they’re whispering here,” the guard said, stopping and leveling the barrel of the assault rifle he carried right into Fred’s face. Fred didn’t even blink.

“Still plotting and scheming, even in the face of certain death,” Lady Haldor said, turning her attention from the Emerald Cove delegate and approached the three of them. “Lord Admiral Hood,” she said, kneeling down in front of the elderly man, prodding him in the chest with her drawn pistol. “I believe Earth would love to get one of their most treasured heroes back in one piece…and alive too…”

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Admiral Hood spat out, “and neither will the UN or Earth.”

“No,” the woman said, a mock-thoughtful look on her face, “I supposed you don’t, but let’s let the other colonies speak for themselves, Admiral.” Gesturing to the guard that still had his rifle pointed in front of Fred’s face, Lady Haldor said, “If they keep on talking, shoot the aide. The woman is most likely UNSC ONI…we’ll need her.” She walked away from the Admiral and towards another delegate and said, “I remember you. Delegation Solaria, was it?”

The terrified delegate mutely nodded before the woman brought the barrel of her pistol close to the delegate’s face, causing the delegate to silently start to cry. “Yes,” the woman said in a very patronizing tone, “you do remember me…good.”

But before the delegate could fully break down into tears, the woman got up and gestured to the others and said, “Get me an encrypted channel on COM…and get me the following colonies’ governments: Solaria, Earth, Mars, Ganymede, Coriana Six, and Titan. We’re going to do some negotiations.”

Before one of Lady Haldor’s people could spring into action, another security guard rushed into the chamber and said, “Ma’am, Earth’s delegate aide is not among those we’ve secured. Neither is Cerapentia, Balfour, or Rubles.”

“Find them,” the rebel leader ordered. “Colebalt and Rogier, make yourselves scarce.” Lady Haldor only took one step back towards Admiral Hood before an uncannily accurate sniper rifle shot tore through her skull and sent a bloody mess spraying across several delegates and the floor.

Several more rebel aides and security guards, including the last two targets, the aides from the colonies of Tristania and Hellenki that they had been tasked with to assassinate, were down even before Fred had time to blink. The guard that had the rifle pointed in front of his face was among the dead. The neural inhibitor collar was suddenly broken from his neck, just as the bandolier of grenades was lifted off and thrown to an uninhabited corner.

The grenades exploded with such force that it sent at least half of those struggling to get up in the chaos that exploded, back down to the floor, including Fred as he felt multiple shrapnel of fiery metallic fragments embed into his back. Pushing the pain of what felt like a thousand stinging bees to the back of his mind, he grasped the rifle of a downed guard and scrambled up. He held the trigger down as he tracked the weapon across several rebel guards who were running towards him, bringing their weapons to bear. They jerkily fell to the slick floor as he glanced back at Falcon and the Admiral.

Falcon, who still had the neural inhibitor around her neck, rolled off her covering of Admiral Hood, bleeding quite badly from the fragments that had struck and were embedded in her, but the Admiral was unharmed. How she was moving with that paralyzing collar on was beyond Fred’s comprehension as he saw her snatch up two pistols. She rapidly fired at several rebel guards on the ground, making sure that they would not rise and shoot at anyone.

Several more high-powered shots rang out from Linda’s sniper rifle and downed guards had recovered and tried to open fire, as both he and Falcon quickly mopped up the rest of the rebels in the chamber.

“Let’s go!” Falcon said as the loyalist aides and security guards picked up several rifles and pistols from the dead hands of their former comrades and started to free the delegates. “They’re armed and safe now.”

He nodded and reloaded the rifle with a clip that he found on the floor. Tapping into COM, he said, “Two and Three, burn those eyes and get those prisoners freed. We’re coming.”

Tinny voices of acknowledgement sounded in his ear as both he and Falcon emerged from the main conference chamber and split down each end of the corridor, quickly picking off the rebel guards As soon as they cleared the corridor, several loyalist guards poured out of the chamber and secured the area. Falcon rejoined him at the end of one of the corridors where Fred heard the angry shouts of several rebel security guards coming down one of the adjacent corridors.

“Back them up a little, please,” Falcon said, holstering her pistol as she ripped the inhibitor collar off her neck and the subsequently dug her fingers into the back of her neck for something.

Fred complied as he swung out from cover and fired several short bursts at the approaching guards before they had time to react. The rebel guards ducked into alcoves and when he ran empty of bullets, he ducked back in. Before the rebels could emerge from hiding, Falcon stepped out and side-armed the collar, with something bloody attached to it, down the length of the corridor. She ducked back into cover, just as bullets zipped past her head and the improvised grenade exploded.

He dropped the useless rifle just as Falcon handed him one of the pistols and the two of them swept the corridor clean of any surviving rebel guards.

“We’ve swept beta level clean,” Kelly tersely said over COM. “Several wounded, but they’ll live. Loyal security keeping an eye on the entrances. Security footage on gamma and delta levels has been disabled, but rewind shows some transient contacts on gamma and delta levels. No hostages on those levels. Shall we pursue?”

There was a barely perceptible noise that sounded behind them, but the two of them instantly turned and sighted down their weapons, just as Linda silently landed in a crouch, dropping into this level from the ceiling. Fred relaxed his stance, as did Falcon, as she said into COM, “Negative on pursue. Something doesn’t sit right. All guards would have been on beta or alpha level. Go through the footage and give me anything that can tell me how this Lady Haldor managed to get in. She didn’t seem like just a typical megalomaniac hostage-taker.”

“Copy.”

Turning to Fred and Linda, Falcon said, “The rest of this level needs to be swept, but if what I think the dead Lady is trying to accomplish, then terrorists are going to be the least of our worries. We need to check the life pods.”

Fred pushed his slight puzzlement aside about the ambiguity of the statement that Falcon had made and nodded. Indeed, he had seen and remembered the actions of several rebel leaders during the early part of the Covenant War; none of them came close to how psychologically fearful just the presence of Lady Haldor did to several of the delegates. He would have to trust Falcon’s judgment on this one. There was already one too many snags in this whole operation, and if Falcon’s intuition was correct, then maybe they could preempt another.

The three of them quickly cleared multiple corridors of any rebel forces, before they finally came to where some of the life pods on the port side of the station were. Falcon cautiously entered one, sweeping her pistol around to make sure nothing was going to jump out before stepping back out.

Though Fred kept his attention down the corridor, making sure that no other rebels were going to try to ambush them, he heard the hiss of the pod closing and the slight whump against the station as it was jettisoned. Three slow minutes ticked by before he heard Falcon murmur, “That’s what I thought.”

“Lead and Falcon,” Douglas’s voice sounded over COM, “We have a problem. Archives shows that over the course of three days, they’ve assembled a bomb in the station’s reactor.”

“Can you tell what kind?” Fred asked.

“Looks like is a long-ranged remote trigger kind,” was the Spartan’s reply.

“Someone’s got to have the trigger,” Falcon said. “Otherwise, why rig both the station and its life pods up with explosives?”

“Threaten to blow the station with a bomb, and then make the hostages evacuate via the life pods and continue to hold the delegates and aides hostage in their explosive life pods,” Linda murmured. “It was going to be a very well executed plan.”

“Too well,” Falcon replied then fell silent for a long moment. “There’s someone on the inside for this job, and I don’t mean the mole that has been trying to bag ONI and their operatives inside Operation BLACK WIDOW for four years. I think someone’s deliberately trying to kill Spartans.”

 

* * *

 

“All contacts on gamma level neutralized,” John confirmed over TEAMCOM as both he and Jerome silently cracked the necks of the last two rebel security guards patrolling this level.

“Same with delta,” one of the other two rebel-ally commandos said.

“Spartan, you’d better come and see this,” General Fenrimore said. “Delta-level, corridor seven-beta. It looks like the extremists have some type of explosive hooked up to the reactor.”

“Copy,” the Master Chief replied and saw the green light of acknowledgement wink on his HUD from Jerome.

The two of them hurriedly made their way down to delta level and as soon as the Master Chief reached the open chamber where the glowing reactor was shining quite brightly, his faceplate polarized to maximum. He saw Fenrimore next to a console near the reactor, tapping at a few buttons. There was a dark spot near the glowing reactor, and he could only surmise as the bomb. John saw several rebel security guards lying dead near the reactor.

“No radiological emissions, Chief,” Cortana whispered. “It looks like it’s a conventional bomb with a long-ranged transmitter. Reactor’s emitting too much interference for me to tell if it’s hot or not.”

“Anyway to disarm it before someone pulls the trigger?” he asked.

“Not sure. We’re going to have to get close to it to get a good reading…or have me go into the network to try to disarm the thing.”

“Well,” Fenrimore said, turning around as John and Jerome approached. “It looks like a bomb, though I wonder why the bomb detectors on the station haven’t been activated yet. At least I think this place still has those detectors…last time I was here, two years ago, it did have them. If we can get into the system from down here and activate the detectors, providing that they are still in the system, maybe it’ll help cause some confusion to those above us.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Mass panic will make them even more trigger happy.”

“Then do you have a better idea, Spartan?” the woman said, lifting her hands off the console. “The longer we let The Grey Lady linger among them, the less their probability of survival becomes. Time is ticking.”

“Five separate security systems, Cortana,” John said over the private channel between him and the AI.

“You do know that impossible is not something I pay attention to often,” she replied.

“Have fun, then,” he said, reaching for his suit’s AI port to take the chip containing Cortana out.

“You always give me the nicest presents, Chief,” the AI teasingly replied. “Thanks.”

“What’s that, Spartan?” Fenrimore suspiciously asked, backing slightly away with her rifle in her hands as the Master Chief took the AI chip out.

“An AI,” he replied, inserting the chip into an open slot on the console.

“You’re the Master Chief, aren’t you?” the General said after a few moments of tense silence, slightly relaxing her grip on the weapon. “No other Spartan in history ever carried an AI…”

John ignored the comment as Cortana said, “I’m in.” Not a second later, the AI said, “Chief! It’s a trap!”

An extremely loud, low-to-high repeating whoop of alarms suddenly blared over the entire station’s emergency PA system as John saw something flicker to life on the dark spot attached to the reactor.

“I’m only a daughter of the revolution, Spartans,” General Fenrimore said, holding her hands up in a surrender gesture as her rifle clattered to the floor. “Thank you for putting your AI into the system. The bomb is now activated and awaiting the remote trigger. I highly doubt that even if your AI is the best that’s been created by the UNSC, it will not be able to churn through the security layers before the trigger is sent. Shoot me and my associates dead if you wish, Spartans…it will not change anything.”

Instead of obliging with the General’s last request, John quickly covered the distance between him and the woman and knocked her out cold with the butt of his rifle before she could even blink. Jerome had already turned and shot the two approaching commandos before the middle-aged woman had crumpled to the ground.

“Cortana, what’s our status?” the Master Chief asked.

“Same as always, Chief. We’re in trouble.”

 

* * *

 

“Do whatever you have to, to keep the delegates from getting inside the pods!” Falcon said, while yanking out several wirings on the master control panel for the port-side alpha level life pods.

“Done,” Fred replied as both he and Linda sprinted as fast as they could down the zig-zag of corridors to stop the civilians from making the gravest mistake of their lives.

Over COM, he heard Falcon say, “Two, see if you can find me a manual override for the security from that station. Something must’ve triggered the alarm and we need to shut it off.”

“Nothing so—whoa… Falcon, I think there’s an aye-ai in the systems.”

“Aye-ai? All five of them are supposed to be automated…”

Fred grabbed the nearest security guard as soon as he and Linda turned the corner and saw the stream of people already trying to fan out. “Get the delegates back into the conference chamber,” he said in the calmest voice he could muster. “They’ve rigged the life pods with explosives.”

“Sir…that’s the alarm for the system to have detected a bomb,” the slightly frightened looking guard protested.

“The systems sensed the life pods,” he lied. “They’re all dead, but the rebels were prepared for this. The sensors should’ve detected them long ago, but with security systems working again, they’ve triggered. Get them back inside, now!”

Down the corridor, he saw Linda repeating the same message to another guard and aide as the security guard he had just cajoled hurried back towards the flow of people, shouting for the delegates to get back into the chamber. He grabbed another guard and repeated his statement, all the while listening to the conversation over COM.

“Two, get this aye-ai’s attention and try to convince it to send out a distress signal,” Falcon said. “And see if it can shut down the alarms.”

“Trying…looks like it’s currently stuck in the tangle of the five systems though,” Kelly replied.

“Keep trying. Four, I need you to go to the master control panel on the starboard pods and yank the wires out for manual override. Blue to yellow port, red to green port. Break the double white wires apart and connect the two together. Then the black needs to be connected to both the blue and red ports. Keep me updated; I’ll be headed towards beta level’s life pods. Lead and Three, do the same with the aft pods when you’re done with crowd control.

“Copy.”

 

* * *

 

“Don’t ask Chief,” Cortana said, “I’m almost through, though it looks like someone in one of the security control rooms is trying to contact me.”

“Friend or foe?” John asked.

“Unknown,” the AI replied. “There are too many hands in the system. If I deviate…”

“Understood,” he replied. “Jerome, make sure gamma level is clear. I’m heading up to figure out why we aren’t dust yet.”

“Copy, Chief,” the Spartan said, giving the Master Chief a curt nod before quickly melting away into the shadows and made his way up to the level in which the dead rebel commandos had said they cleared.

Though the MJOLNIR armor’s tracker showed zero contacts, as he emerged into a silent corridor on beta level, he kept to the shadows as best as possible. A few minutes later after silently navigating his way through the station with a rough map that Cortana had uploaded to both him and Jerome after she had infiltrated the systems, he saw a red blob appear just on the peripheral edge of his tracker. Melting into the shadows of an alcove, he waited until the red blob got closer and suddenly sprang out with the intent to clobber the approaching person.

“Douglas?” he said, lowering his rifle as he saw the equally surprised look on the slightly disguised Spartan’s face as he too, lowered his rifle.

“Chief? What are you doing here?”

“Long story,” he said. “Sit rep?”

“Dead rebels and life pods loaded with explosives,” the Spartan said, gesturing down the corridor as the two of them hurried down it. “Going for manual override to keep anyone from accessing the pods. Oh and there’s a remote-trigger bomb attached to the reactor in our basement.”

“I know. Cortana’s working on disarming it.”

“Great…so how come we’re not atoms and bits yet?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” John replied but stopped as soon as he saw another red dot on the edge of his tracker. He held up a fist as Douglas skidded to a stop, looking warily around, before pointing for Douglas to melt into an alcove as he slipped into the corner of an adjacent corridor.

He listened carefully and could barely hear the footsteps of the person approaching. Whoever it was, the person was good at masking his or her footsteps. He waited a few moments as the contact continued down. As soon as the contact was less than three meters away, both he and Douglas emerged from their hiding places with their weapons leading the way, causing the person approaching to stop as she lowered her weapon and stared at them in surprise.

“Ma’am?” Douglas said, lowering his weapon slightly, “You’re supposed to be dead…”

“I feel much better now, thank-you-very-much,” the woman said. “Master Chief, what are you doing here?”

Though John kept his weapon pointed at the formerly declared dead SPARTAN-I.I, before he could answer the asked question, both the woman and Douglas tilted their heads a bit as they received COM messages from an unknown frequency.

“Copy,” the woman said. “The Master Chief is aboard, which means the AI in the system is most likely Cortana. Search all the bodies. We need to find that trigger. Two, keep working on establishing that distress signal.”

“Falcon, what if it’s not here?” Douglas asked.

“Then we can only hope that rescue vessels will be here before someone decides they want to blow us up,” the SPARTAN-I.I replied.

 

* * *

 

“What the hell is going on up there?” Commandant Zergei said as he stared at the security footage of the main conference chamber, along with several corridors that were currently up on the laptop screen.

“Looks like a giant party to me,” Buck quipped before falling silent as the seven commandos in the structure, along with Zergei and Mercell swiftly pulled out their weapons and pointed it straight at Buck and Dare.

However, instead of shrinking back, neither the former ONI operative nor ODST moved, though their hands remained hovering close to where their own weapons were strapped to their waists. Both of them knew that it was futile to draw their own weapons, for they would be shot dead before their weapons could clear their holsters.

“I guess this concludes negotiations,” Buck lightly said, keeping his eyes on the seven commandos.

“No, it doesn’t,” Mercell said. “You see, we now have all your precious SPARTAN-IIs on board the bomb-rigged station. You will acquiesce to our demands, or we blow them and the delegates aboard, up.”

“The UN and UNSC will never negotiate with terrorists, Councilor,” Dare replied, narrowing her eyes a bit.

“Actually,” Buck spoke up, “I think what the lovely lady means to say is…I don’t hear any of your boys and girls scrambling to back the seven dwarfs and you guys up. I mean, _pfft_ , seven commandos and two baggy-old people…sheesh…”

“Buck, we’re as old as they are…” Dare hissed at him.

“Yeah, but we’ve kept in better shape than they have,” Buck protested. “Anyhow…do you hear anyone coming, Veronica?”

Dare merely rolled her eyes at the retired ODST as all seven commandos and the two rebel leaders locked and loaded their weapons. But before any of them could fire, all seven commandos dropped to the ground, each with a single bullet through their head in less than three seconds. The pistols in both Mercell and Zergei’s hands had also been shot out as four armored people materialized from thin air, next to Dare and Buck.

“More SPARTAN-II’s?” Zergei said, falling to his knees. “But the reports only said there were six…”

“You didn’t think that we’d fall for your shoddy operation, did you?” Dare said, crouching down so that she was eye level with Zergei. “The UN and her colonies genuinely want peace between us and the Insurrectionists. Unfortunately, its people like you, the five targets you gave us, and Lady Haldor that make it impossible.” She stood back up and said, “The treacheries that all of you committed today won’t be looked upon favorably when the UN colonial session is held in two months, in Geneva, but we’re willing to open the door to the future of peace without a gun. All of you chose to throw that option away today, hence the result as is. But I think the UN will be willing to give you another chance, though only just.”

“Jammer’s still in place, ma’am,” one of the Spartans said. “All the others outside are clean.”

“All right,” Dare said. “Get one of your people out of range and make contact. We have two extras to pick up, so that Pelican needs to be moved.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the same Spartan said, and then gestured for one of the others to go.

“Buck, search the rest of them,” the retired ONI agent said. “Make sure the trigger isn’t on them.”

“Do I get to keep what I find?”

“No.”

 

* * *

 

“Bomb’s disabled,” Cortana finally said over TEAMCOM, which was now established to include not only John and Jerome, but all the other Spartans as well. “Colonial ships should be here within the hour.”

Relieved looks painted the faces of several of the Spartans, none more so than Falcon, who leaned slightly against the wall outside the main conference chamber. John could feel the tension leave him as he absorbed the good news. None of them had found the remote trigger on any of the dead bodies, or on a careful search of the delegates, loyal security guards, and aides. However, that was not a major concern anymore, since the bomb had been successfully disabled.

“Falcon, I also have an incoming transmission for you from the planet,” Cortana said.

“Put it through,” Falcon replied, touching the earpiece for a second. Seconds later, John heard her say, “Mission accomplished, ma’am. The bomb’s been disabled and all five targets have been eliminated, along with a Lady Grey Haldor who tried to take the entire place hostage. We have a General Fenrimore bound and gagged in the reactor level here. The Master Chief said that she had traveled up from the planet. Did negotiations go as planned?”

Falcon fell silent for a few long moments before a slight frown appeared and then she said, “Copy and wilco.” She touched the earpiece again before looking back up and all around her at the other Spartans, saying, “It’s time that all of you get the four-year intel on Operation BLACK WIDOW because this party is not quite over yet.”

She gestured for them to follow her and John heard her say over COM, “Cortana, tweak that reactor for security shielding. We’re coming down your way and need gamma-level shields. There’s some classified info that needs to be distributed.”

 

~*~*~*~


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Elysium Fields**

 

Fred idly leaned against the shadows of the corridor’s wall that was adjacent to the main corridor that the surviving delegates and aides were walking in. Escorting the survivors were personal security guards from their transports, along with station security guards. Most, if not all were quite traumatized from their ordeal and more than a few were crying. However, several of them had been injured and were being helped out by medical personnel, though he knew that all of them would live to see another day.

Adrenaline from the events that had just happened, coupled with his shock and surprise at the appearance of an old friend, and the information dump he and the other SPARTAN-IIs had just received about the mysterious Operation BLACK WIDOW, was starting to give way to bone-numbing fatigue. However, he pushed aside that fatigue – the mission was not quite over yet. There was still one loose end to tie, and it had sent chills over him as to how close the loose end had been to all of them.

He highly doubted that even Lieutenant Commander Creighton knew how close the loose end was, since the _Ember of Winter_ was the only ship to have received and supported the intel given about the entire mission, both on the surface of the planet and on the station. In fact, over half of what he had pieced together and speculations from the shipboard AI was slightly off the mark, but a lot of the intel that had Falcon’s name attached to it and sent to the either the SPARTANI.Is, SPARTAN-IIs, or SPARTAN-IIIs had been intercepted by the mole within the _Winter_ and redistributed accordingly. Someone aboard the ship really wanted either Falcon or the Spartans dead…or both.

Lieutenant Commander Creighton had already been dismissed as a possible suspect in the midst of the operation, due to the events that happened on the same station two years ago. The _Winter_ had been on the far side of the swath of colonies when the original team of several SPARTAN I.Is had infiltrated the station in nearly the same way that Fred and his team had, except that the SPARTAN-I.Is mission had been to prevent the assassination of several delegates. Falcon had been a part of that mission, and she and the now-deceased SPARTAN-I.I named Neal, had been the only survivors of the mission. The Lieutenant Commander was also a former ONI agent, and Fred got the sense that they never really let one of their own go.

Former ONI agent Captain Dare had also ruled out that the shipboard AI was responsible for the redistribution of intercepted intel, but she only cited her reasoning as ‘Peloponnesus’. That and the fact that the AI had blocked all transmissions to and from the _Winter_ during the entire time of the mission and while they were trying to find the remote trigger on the station and on the planet. That was only two of the entire crew accounted for…

Things seemed so much easier back when it was just the Covenant to fight.

A shadow fell across the corridor as Fred looked up and saw Admiral Hood standing near the entrance to the corridor. He and the rest of the Spartans down the corridor snapped to attention as the Admiral approached.

“At ease, Spartans,” the Admiral said. “I just wanted to thank all of you for saving our lives today.” Admiral Hood then individually addressed each of them, saying, “Master Chief, it’s good to see you again.”

“Sir,” Fred heard John say, snapping off a crisp salute, to which the Admiral returned.

“Spartan-zero-nine-two, thank you.”

“Yes, sir,” Jerome replied, mirroring John’s actions.

“Spartan-zero-four-two, security would’ve been a hassle had it not been for you. Good job.”

“Thank you, sir,” Douglas said, giving Admiral Hood a nod and a salute.

“Spartan-zero-eight-seven, my thanks to you too.”

“Sir,” Kelly replied, mirroring all the others’ actions.

“Spartan-zero-five-eight. Thank you for being a superb aide, and though you were not truly one, if I were to attend the next conference in two years, I’d still consider you as one of my choices.”

“Thank you, sir,” Linda quietly said after a few moments of slightly stunned silence, but gave a crisp salute to the Admiral.

“Spartan-one-zero-four…Lieutenant,” the Admiral said, turning his attention to Fred. “I believe this was yours that Lady Haldor took from you.” From the Admiral’s jacket sleeve, he withdrew a familiar-looking blade and handed it to Fred. “Thank you for protecting as many of the delegates as possible.”

Fred accepted the blade back and slid it beneath his torn and frayed jacket’s sleeve where the blade sheath was and saluted the Admiral, saying, “Thank you, sir.”

“Lieutenant Hattersfield,” Admiral Hood finally addressed the last of them in the corridor. “Or is it still Agent Falcon?”

“Sir,” Falcon said, “It’s actually Senior Chief Petty Officer Leigh Mendez. Falcon is my codename and Hattersfield was my career surname. That career name and rank died four years ago in that courtroom on Reach.”

“Well Chief Mendez,” the Admiral said, nodding, “it’s good to see that you’re not dead. Please pass my compliments on to Captain Dare for the job well done.”

“Yes, sir,” Falcon replied, saluting the Admiral. “Thank you, sir.”

“And Chief Mendez?” the Admiral said, causing Falcon to falter a tiny bit in her salute. “Drop the Luna accent. Best let the real Lady Aldera re-take her role in two years.”

“Yes, sir,” Falcon said, tugging off a tiny piece of film that had been taped to her throat.

Only when the Admiral finally left did they all relax their stances. About three hours after Admiral Hood left, the crowd was starting to thin out as the last of the delegates and security personnel evacuated. Moments later, another shadow fell across the corridor, and this time, it was the retired ONI officer, Captain Dare, and retired Gunnery Sergeant Buck who entered the corridor.

“Buckle up boys and girls, your ride’s here,” Buck stated.

 

* * *

 

“Just what the hell is going on Captain Dare?”

John heard the angry tone in Lieutenant Commander Creighton’s voice as he and the others descended down the ramp of the Pelican’s open belly. The hangar was unusually quiet and he barely heard the departing footsteps of the cloaked SPARTAN-IIIs and Falcon leaving. Tom, Lucy, Olivia, and Ash had clandestinely supported the ground mission, tailing the four of them, while four of the six second-generation SPARTAN-I.Is, Tracy, Alexei, Julia, and Viktor had supported via a Prowler that had been jamming ground communications from the planet to the station or to the _Winter_. John had a feeling that the Prowler and its occupants were still somewhere near the _Winter_.

“I apologize for this necessary measure, Lieutenant Commander,” Dare said approaching the slightly irate-looking captain of the vessel, who was the only one to descend the stairs into the hangar bay. “But I need to take temporary control of this vessel. We have evidential reason to believe you have Insurrectionist spies aboard.”

“Is that why my shipboard AI locked all quarters, even the bridge?”

“Correct.”

“How can I help?”

John saw Dare stop for a moment, clearly not expecting the reply, before quickly recovering and saying, “We need to resume normal activities in a few minutes. There are three high-profile Insurrectionist leaders aboard the Pelican. They are prisoners of the UNSC. I’ve already sent several agents out to neutralize the ones that both Cortana and your shipboard AI have analyzed as possible spies. There are those who may be sleeper agents. The Insurrectionists high command was almost entirely eliminated today. Given the predictable nature of humans, they will either be consolidating their power and information or will be openly striking. Openly striking will be most likely the choice for the sleepers to try to free their leaders.”

“What do you want me to say to the crew?”

“You’ve been under a blackout since before mission start, Creighton,” Dare said. “Your profile says that you were former ONI. I’m sure you can make up a sufficient story.”

“And what if they don’t strike?” the Lieutenant Commander asked.

“When we get back, ONI will be ready to take the entire crew for espionage review.”

“Espionage review?” John whispered to Cortana.

“I’m not sure about that myself, Chief,” the AI replied. “But it doesn’t sound like a happy return home for any of them.”

“Understood,” said Lieutenant Commander Creighton. “I assume that I will also be under review?”

“Off--”

“Look out!” someone shouted, as one of the invisible Spartans slammed into the Lieutenant Commander, knocking him down onto the deck, just as a high-powered sniper round zinged by where his head used to be. Unfortunately, the cloaked Spartan was not quick enough to dodge the shot that had been intended for the captain of the ship and was struck, but John was already tracing the origin of the sniper round, as were the other Spartans.

An extremely short staccato burst of gunfire echoed through the hangar, all concentrated in one tiny area, a grate that was near the port-forward floor of the place. Not even a dying rattle or hiss of the person who had tried to kill the Lieutenant Commander was heard as a pool of blood seeped out of the grate.

John saw Jerome quickly covered the distance between where they had disembarked from the Pelican and to the grate. The Spartan roughly yanked the grate off and pulled out the dead, bullet-ridden body of the rebel, along with the mangled metal of a former sniper rifle.

“The cook!” Cortana exclaimed. “It was the damn cook!”

“Leigh?” the surprised whisper of the Lieutenant Commander was almost drowned out by the scrape of Jerome dragging the body and the shredded rifle across the metallic floor and dumped both inside the Pelican.

“I have pulse, but it’s slowly weakening,” Dare said, crouched in front of Falcon, who was fading in and out with the damaged invisibility module still attached to her waist belt. From John’s angle, he couldn’t tell what the sniper round had done, but he did see a lot of pooling blood on the deck. “Creighton, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” the Lieutenant Commander said after a pause, shaking his head slightly as he got up from the floor. “Get her to Medlab three. I’ll be on the bridge.”

“Will do,” Dare said. “We won’t let her die.”

“I know,” Lieutenant Commander Creighton said, giving her and the other Spartans a curt nod. To John, the Lieutenant Commander said, “Master Chief, I’ll need Cortana to give me access to the bridge. Calista said she’s under orders not to answer any hails except from her.”

“Yes, sir,” John replied, and took the AI housing chip out of his armor’s interface and inserted it into the hangar’s AI port as the Lieutenant Commander quickly left.

Cortana’s holographic form resolve on the small stand and she said, “Whenever you’re ready, just give the word, Captain Dare.”

“Let’s plug the last of the leak then,” Dare said.

 

* * *

 

_Seventeen hours later…_

 

It was a quick and quiet put down of the last of the rebels that had been hidden aboard the _Ember of Winter_. Some were people that John had seen often when he was not in cryo, and more than one had been unexpected sympathizers to the rebels’ cause. All were not formally charged with espionage or aiding-abetting the enemy of the state, but they had been the first of the crew to be put into cryo. When the _Winter_ got back to her first port-of-call, Reach, the rebels in cryo would be wheeled off the ship to a secured ONI facility.

Several trusted, armed Marines kept watch over the brig, where the three rebel leaders were kept. Those crewmembers who had tried to initially give the leaders some things to help them escape had been quietly knocked out by the cloaked Spartans, while John and his Spartans maintained an open presence aboard.

Now however, with their work done, Lieutenant Commander Creighton had ordered all of them, including the cloaked ones: Tom, Lucy, Olivia, and Ash, into cryo. The other four SPARTAN-I.Is: Alexei, Tracy, Julia, and Viktor, were still maintaining their presence in the Prowler that was still monitoring the ship, even in Slipspace.

“Hey, Chief?” Kelly said, as John looked up from inspecting his armor’s helmet. “Do you know where Fred is?”

John shook his head. He thought he saw Fred with them a second ago, but looking around, it seemed that the Lieutenant had disappeared somewhere. John noted that Fred’s armor hadn’t even been touched and was still sitting on the bench in a neat, laid out, orderly fashion.

“He said he had some unfinished business to take care of,” Linda spoke up as she scratched the cat that had climbed into her helmet that was sitting on this particular cryo chamber’s bench. For such a tiny animal, the feline purred quite loudly. “Something about paying a debt…”

“Weird,” Kelly said, sticking her helmet on and activating the external speakers. “I thought it’s usually the other way around…someone always says they owe us or something.”

John shrugged as he stuck his helmet on and the cool blue light up of a solid boot of his software and the familiar hum of a functional MJOLNIR armor was back. ‘Freezer burn’ as most of the medics and crewmembers called it, was common whenever the Spartans entered cryo, but if something happened between here and their destination, he was not going to get caught flat out of his armor. The rebels might be in cold storage, but he wasn’t going to take chances.

“The Lieutenant will be fine,” he said.

 

* * *

 

So far, the tiny, compressed and re-engineered hardware of the modular cloaking device was holding, despite the low charge it had. There hadn’t been time to take a high-powered one as soon as Fred had seen the missing piece of equipment from one of the particular storage lockers that the Spartans often used. He was supposed to be in cryo, getting ready for the long, cold sleep, but after all that had gone on…hunches weren’t something he had, but he wouldn’t put it past anything that now would be the best time for a rebel to strike.

It wasn’t the Lieutenant Commander the rebel would strike at; he was too high profiled and already had a failed attempt happen only seventeen hours before. Lieutenant Commander Creighton would be on guard. It wouldn’t be the SPARTAN-IIIs already in cryo or an attempt on the SPARTAN-IIs – the rebel knew it was impossible for him or her to succeed. It would be the lynchpin in the entire operation – the only one who had overseen the entire operation for its four-plus years of duration. The one targeted would be the only one with enough evidence and knowledge to possibly bring at least half of the rebel network to its knees.

Fred listened in silence and as an invisible presence in the medical ward where Falcon was currently recovering from her wound. Lieutenant Commander Creighton was currently quietly conversing with Falcon, and Fred tuned out the conversation as best as he could. Moments later, the Lieutenant Commander left and only the quiet beeps of the machines blanketed the area as Falcon resumed sleeping.

The ward was incredibly silent for a few long minutes, causing him to start to doubt if what he saw in the armory was true. Suddenly, the doors to the ward swished open and Fred saw an attendant walk in with a few syringes on the tray.

He tensed as the attendant set the tray down, but before the attendant pick up a syringe, the attendant’s neck suddenly snapped unnaturally sideways as she crumpled to the ground dead. Fred could not see anyone in the air, but he did see the movement of several syringes as some of the content was dumped into the tray and mixed with others to create what he could only assume as a lethal concoction.

He didn’t wait any further and sprang from where he was standing, estimating where the assailant’s neck and arms would be in regards to the free-floating syringes. He had guessed right as his right arm wrapped around the assailant’s neck while his left arm clamped tightly against two forearms. The concoction flew from the assailant’s hands and he wrenched his head sideways as it flew by, though a tiny trace managed to splash on his face and burned against his skin.

Using his weight and momentum, he forced the assailant down onto the ground, and quickly rolled the person over. He pinned the person to the ground by wrenching both arms backwards and into the air while leaning a knee on the assailant’s lower back.

The assailant struggled, but he held his grip and weight steady as he half-blindly searched what he felt as the waist belt of the assailant and found the missing invisible cloaked module. Yanking it off, it deactivated and he was quite stunned to see who exactly it was he had just prevented from assassinating Falcon.

“The XO…” a hoarse whisper said from above him. “I would have never seen that coming…”

Fred glanced up to see the pale-looking Falcon leaning over the medical bed she was currently resting on and realized that she could see him as her eyes glanced at him and at Lieutenant Eileen Jacobi, who was still struggling to get free. The Lieutenant was oddly very strong and if he continued to hold her like that; he had no doubt that the XO was going to rip her arms out of her sockets just to get free. He quickly made the decision and wrapped the arm holding the tiny modular device around the Lieutenant’s neck, tightening his hold until the Lieutenant passed out.

“By the way, your cloak failed when you fell to the ground,” Falcon continued to whisper in a very scratchy voice. “But you have my thanks. How did you know?”

“I didn’t, but I owed you one on that Forerunner planet,” he stated, getting up, just as Falcon leaned back and held up a hand holding device attached to the bed, indicating that she had already pressed the red emergency summon button.

“You don’t ever owe me, sir,” she stated. “Friends always protect friends.”

Fred hesitated for a moment before nodding, just as the CMO and several attendants rushed in. “Get better soon, Leigh” he said, stepping back to allow the CMO and the others clear access.

“Will do, Fred,” she replied, giving him a small smile.

He was glad he did not have to see another friend die.

 

* * *

 

_Ten hours later…_

 

“En-cee-oh now, eh?”

“Leigh Mendez never went through oh-cee-es, Jake,” she replied, folding her hands on the table as she pushed the encrypted datapad to the side. “She did however, join ONI.”

“Why?” he asked. “How come you didn’t even try to contact me or even let me know that you were alive?”

“I’m sorry it had to be like this, Jake,” she said, shaking her head a bit. “I almost didn’t survive that massacre. It was better to let everyone think I was dead…better to ferret out the moles within ONI.”

“Duty and service before life,” he bitterly said. “I know how it is and I understand it too, but I thought we were family, Leigh. Family does not burn bridges and cut off all ties with each other, even if things become bad.”

“We are,” she said, reaching a hand out to placate him, to which he leaned back a bit, just shy of her tentative reach. “You of all people should know the missions that Zero sent us on…”

“I do,” he growled, folding his arms over his chest. “That was the past. Was this all really necessary for BLACK WIDOW?”

“Yes,” she stated, taking her hand back before sliding the datapad in front of her again.

The silence that stretched between them was a long, uncomfortable one until Jake slowly let his body relax and unfolded his arms. “I’m just glad that you’re alive, Leigh,” he whispered.

She didn’t say anything in reply except to give her best friend a rare smile.

“The world ended…you’re smiling,” Jake said after a few moments, chuckling.

“Did I make you laugh?” Leigh said.

“Yes.”

“Good, then my work here is done,” she said, tapping her datapad. “You’ve been too dour and uptight these last few hours...and I know that it’s not because of me. Is it because of Lieutenant Jacobi?”

“Yes…and no…” he said, rubbing his face with his hands before continuing on. “How could I have been so blind to it?”

“Don’t blame yourself. I didn’t even expect it at all. It was just luck that it happened…that’s all. I’ve already run the preliminary background analysis on Jacobi on this datapad, so it should hopefully be done by the time we get to Reach. If you could pull Zero files for overlay that should give me a good comprehensive report to give to ONI brass when we land.”

“I don’t have access to ONI or Zero files anymore,” he said.

She snorted, “Don’t lie to me, Jake. You’re piss poor at it.”

“Fine…I’ll run it…just don’t blame me if Calista or Cortana have a bite at it,” he said, holding his hands up in slight protest.

She merely shook her head before saying, “About your shipboard AI…can you please get it to change its voice? It seriously creeps me out to hear my own voice coming through the PA when I’m not speaking. Ask her to do a Luna or Mars accent or something…”

He shrugged and said, “I’ll see what I can do when you’re taking a nap in the ice box. No guarantees though.”

“Thanks,” she replied.

They were silent for a few long minutes before Jake asked, “Now that Operation BLACK WIDOW is done, what are you going to do?”

“I think I might transfer to Reserves and continue to work in ONI…or retire,” Leigh replied. “After all, this thing they call peace is on the horizon, so instead of living to fight another day, maybe its time to rest.”

 

~*~*~*~


	5. Chapter 5

**Epilogue: Seven Months Later…**

 

“We’re gathered here to celebrate the life of Lord Admiral Terrance Hood, father, son, and dedicated servant to the United Nations Space Command. He was beloved among his family and among those soldiers he commanded. We remember him for the sacrifices he made and the courage he gave all of us during Humanity’s finest hour of their war against the former Covenant races…”

Snow was falling on the hillside and throughout this region, much to the surprise of so many terraforming engineers who had thought that Reach’s eco system would never reach a low as it once did. The mourners and many who had gathered to honor the life of Lord Admiral Hood, who had died peacefully in his sleep, were all bundled up against the cold. There were many who held large, black, somber umbrellas to shield against the lightly falling snow, some huddling together for slight warmth or to comfort one another.

John and his Spartans were near the back of one side of the small crowd that had gathered on this hillside military graveyard. Very few veterans from the Human-Covenant War were actually buried here, and most of the markers in neat rows were just that, markers. The entire place had been leveled when the Covenant had pushed through Reach over twenty-five years ago.

When the priest finished his eulogy, the master of ceremonies called for a ‘present arms’. All those military personnel, including John and the other Spartans, snapped to attention, saluting. He held his hand proudly against the tip of his dress uniform’s cap – Admiral Hood deserved no less of an honorable send off. As the twenty-one gun salute sounded and echoed throughout the hillside, he saw the visible flinch of a few people, not used to such a loud sound.

The call to ‘order arms’ was given and the solemn ceremony was over. Streams of people left, but more than a few approached the widowed Mrs. Hood, along with her children and grandchildren to give them their condolences. John wasn’t sure what to say to the widowed lady, so he decided to turn and walk away, only to find himself face-to-face with Maria and Linda.

Following the Station Kalpaña mission, John had been surprised that Linda had put in a request to FLEETCOM to retire from active duty and be placed in the Reserves. The request had traveled all the way to HIGHCOM and they had approved the request. John didn’t fully understand the reason behind it, but he respected his friend enough to not push her for answers.

Linda had a contemplative look on her face as she accompanied Maria, who had changed quite a bit since John last saw her. Gone was the head of black hair, replaced by grey-white hair, covered in the retired dress uniform cap, but the cunning light in Maria’s brown eyes were still there.

“It’s been a long time, John,” Maria said, gesturing for them to move away a bit to give the Hood family some privacy.

“It’s good to see you, Maria,” he replied, grasping the offered hand of Maria, noting how frail it looked, though her grip was still quite as strong as he remembered. By his count, she was over sixty years old, but her strength hadn’t even faltered. He let go of her hand and gave a nod to Linda, saying to both of them, “Retirement looks like it is treating you well.”

“I’m not exactly retired, John,” Maria replied. “Linda and I are just not field active. ONI’s still having us run their errands.” The elderly woman turned to the others and addressed them each in turn: a bit of a silly banter between her and Kelly, a word of encouragement to Jerome, and advice to Douglas, and finally a comment of change that Fred chose to be no longer an officer but had returned to being an NCO.

John was proud of his Spartans, and even with changes rapidly coming, he knew that they would all adapt as they had been since being selected for the program. They would continue to protect Earth and her colonies from any threat.

~*~*~*~

 

FINI


End file.
